


Castle Made of Sand (Fireball Part II)

by MayGlenn



Series: No "I" in Threesome [3]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Blindfolds, Breaking Up & Making Up, Conversations About Race, Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Financial Issues, Hurt/Comfort, It Would Be Easier If It Were, M/M, Maria and Alex Sharing a Boyfriend, Maybe This Is Subdrop, Michael "My Genius Increases When I'm Pissed Off" Guerin, Michael Guerin Needs a Hug, No One's Sure Which, No Way Just One of Them Could Handle Him On Their Own, Not Very Isobel or Max Friendly, Or A Spanking, Oral Sex, Polyamory Negotiations, Sometimes developing relationship means things get worse before they get better, Strip Poker, Sub Michael Guerin, Temporary Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:08:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23544421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: It would be just like him to screw up the best relationship he ever had by being trailer trash.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca & Alex Manes, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: No "I" in Threesome [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667581
Comments: 116
Kudos: 112





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you to [Angsty Aliens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoriLane/pseuds/Lori%20Lane) and [El-Gilliath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/el_gilliath/pseuds/el_gilliath) who beta read sections of this for me!

Michael blushed when he shoved his hands in his pockets and found the cash Alex had left there that morning, remembering the searing heat of that night, but feeling just a little bit weird and a lot dirty about the money, not in a way he could put his finger on. Part of him desperately wanted to _keep_ the money himself, because his truck needed gas, but he texted Maria, anyway, because, he mused, grinning wryly to himself, not doing so was probably how working girls like him got bitch slapped, or something.

_Michael: you forgot your “tip” in my pants ;)_

_Maria: baby i got everything i needed from your pants :kiss:_

Well, fine, he thought. If she was going to forget about it, he’d just borrow it until payday and sneak a couple twenties in the Wild Pony tip jar after he got paid Friday. He was vaguely annoyed that they were just messing around with real money like this, but whatever. 

When Michael checked his texts at a break, Maria and Alex were in the group chat.

_Alex: Hope you’re doing okay, Michael. Stay aware of your physical and mental state, and check in when you can._

_Alex: I had a great time last night._

_Alex: Can I bring you lunch?_

_Maria: Movie night starts at 10 at my house. Can someone bring popcorn and coke?_

Michael didn’t clean his hands before answering, he was so eager to respond. 

_Michael: I’m good, but I got the snacks. What kind?_

_Alex: Coke zero for me, please._

_Maria: REAL SUGAR Dr. Pepper for me! Thanks, babe._

Michael nodded, committing this to memory, and feeling a little better about things now that he had somewhere to spend Maria’s money. Not that a tank of gas and some sodas bought with Alex’s pocket change which Maria apparently didn’t miss really compared to how often Alex had bought him dinner, or Maria had cooked for him, or they drove him around places, using their gas, and Alex and Maria had _actually_ exchanged over real dollars last night only some of which was the price of a glass of Scotch _he_ drank (whether or not after the upcharge it actually _cost_ Maria that much, but still). 

Not to mention all the sex toys they had bought… 

Michael grunted at himself and fucked around scrapping a Mercury Villager for the rest of the day, trying to stop himself from thinking. It would be just like him to screw up the best relationship he ever had by being trailer trash. 

…

Michael worked until he tired himself out, which took until it got dark, and he _still_ had some energy left. All this from a few volts and a little rough sex. He’d have to tell Max and Isobel, except he didn’t want to share anything remotely that intimate with them, ever, so maybe they didn’t need to know. 

In all the weird shit he had tried as a teen that led to knowing that drinking acetone could numb pain, he had never more than gently shocked himself (which did nothing, so not worth continuing the experiment). Now after the lightning bullshit with Noah and Max, he was pretty sure if he hooked himself up to a car battery he could be God. 

And electricity seemed like a much better alternative to _killing people_ , which was the only other way he knew to boost his powers. 

That at least was a more distracting thought than money. Why did he even care about money? This wasn’t his planet, his country. He vaguely thought about stealing the cokes and popcorn from the convenience store just to show his disdain but...man, in the off-chance it went wrong, he did _not_ want to have the ‘please bail me out of jail’ conversation with Maria or Alex. Or even Max or Isobel.

(Hell, he’d probably call Liz Ortecho if something like that happened.) 

“Okay, I got the goods,” Michael said, rolling up to Maria’s with several bags of groceries. He’d even splurged and gone for the big bag of pre-popped popcorn, and the already-cold sodas from the fridge section. 

“Oh, I meant microwave popcorn,” Maria said airily, when Michael set the huge yellow bag of $1.99 pre-popped popcorn down. Michael bristled, but Maria opened up the bag and started munching, seemingly without a problem. 

“But that’s fine, I love this stuff. Ohmygod, you got ho-hos! And Dr. Thunder!” she laughed, a sound that surprised Michael a little. “You know, I honestly like that _better_ than Dr. Pepper…”

Alex didn’t say anything, however, as he pulled the Big K brand “Cola Oh!” out of the bag, and if it hadn’t been for the handprint they shared, Michael might not have known how _annoyed_ Alex was by it. He could tell Alex was _also_ annoyed at himself for _being_ annoyed, so any other time he might have ignored it. 

Instead, Michael felt stupid, like, what was it, a two dollar difference to go for the name brand to make Alex happy, to give him exactly what he had asked for? He just never cared, but Alex was just kind of a fussy guy so of course he—

“I’m not _fussy,_ Guerin, but ‘Cola-Oh’ and Coke Zero Sugar do taste different,” Alex said, trying not to sound mad, and actually trying to placate Michael, whose feelings he could tell were hurt. Good to know the handprint could backfire like this. “Sorry. It’s fine. I shouldn’t be so picky.” 

“No, no, you told me exactly what to get, I’m sorry.” 

“I’ll just—Maria, you have Coke Zeroes in the fridge?”

“I’ll get ‘em—” 

“Michael, it’s fine—” 

“ _Okay_ , what is going on with you two?” Maria asked. “Your bad vibes are gonna upset my mom.” 

“They’re not going to upset me. Nothing can upset me when we’re watching _Terminator 2_ ,” Mimi said, floating downstairs. 

“Except _Terminator 2_ ,” Maria agreed. “Which is supposed to make you cry.” 

“Boys, don’t fight. You shouldn’t be drinking that fake sugar stuff, anyway, Alexander. Worse for you than real sugar.” 

“I...think I’m just gonna have water, Mimi, thanks,” Alex said, and got up. He squeezed Michael’s shoulder as he walked past and leaned down to whisper, “Maybe I’ll punish you later.” 

Michael made an effort to laugh, though he wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but Alex smiled, and the negative feedback loop of distaste between them dissipated, so he guessed he felt okay about it. When Alex returned to the couch with his glass of water, Mimi made room for him. Michael and Maria sat on pillows on the floor, and movie night was nice with their cheap popcorn and sodas and sobbing at the end. 

Michael dropped what was left of the money on the coffee table before he went upstairs with Maria, and Alex didn’t mention the cokes again.


	2. Chapter 2

“Read ‘em and weep,” Michael said, laying down a pair of  _ twos _ , ace high. 

Maria and Alex screamed with laughter. He had to be trying to get a hand that bad. 

“Michael!” 

“Michael, it’s no fun if you don’t try!” 

“You’re losing on purpose, you skank!” 

Michael tipped his hat and shrugged. “Guess I don’t get my pants back.” 

They were playing strip poker, and of course Michael Guerin was losing. 

Alex rolled his eyes, showing Maria a full house, making Maria curse and throw a Flaming Hot Cheeto at him. 

Maria and Alex were appropriately competitive, as Maria’s jewelry lay in a pile at Alex’s elbow while Maria had Alex’s prosthetic resting on the table next to her. Otherwise, they were fully dressed. 

“I think  _ you  _ guys are the ones who aren’t getting into the spirit of the game,” Michael said, taking a shot of acetone with a tequila chaser. He was feeling  _ no pain _ , and grinning dumbly at both of them. 

“Oh, my God, Michael, you’ve had enough,” Maria said, corking the bottle and putting it behind her chair, though that was big talk for a girl who owned a bar and kept somehow losing at poker to Captain Card Shark over here. “Alex, was this your dumb plan all along? Get us drunk and cream us at poker?” 

“I didn’t get you drunk,” Alex corrected, shuffling the cards freakishly fast. “I just chose not to join you in getting drunk.” 

“Only a little,” Maria said haughtily. “Wyatt’s out of jail and I had to look at his face, so, yeah, I needed to take the edge off. I don’t know what  _ he’s  _ had.”

“Just enough to make it a party,” Michael answered. “Though, you know, DeLuca, if you fall asleep, Alex will take advantage of me while I’m drunk. You can’t let that happen, now, can you?” 

“If anyone’s going to take advantage of you, baby boy, it’s gonna be me,” Maria told him, happily throwing his shirt that she had won in the last hand around her shoulders. It wasn’t quite as filthy as he often was, and it smelled nice, like rain. 

“Mm, ya promise?” Michael asked. 

“Are either of you going to place a bet?” Alex asked, annoyed. He had taken off his left shoe as ante, and shrugged off his jacket. 

“Ooh a jacket! Big spender!” Maria said. “You must be hot, or you’re bluffing because you think I’m drunk and I’ll fall for it. Well! I’ll just make you vaguely uncomfortable by having to look at me shirtless!” 

“Maria, you don’t have to yell,” Alex laughed as she struggled out of her shirt and Michael’s, to take off her own shirt, and then put Michael’s back on, unbuttoned. “And your body does literally nothing for me, Maria, that’s the point.” 

“Boo,” Maria said. 

“You do look like you’ve been working out, though. Have you?” 

“Oh, you noticed! I do love you.” 

“Hey!” Michael said. “I noticed! Your body does things for  _ me _ .” 

Maria ruffled his hair. “I love you, too, baby. You gonna bet your boots or your hat next, though?” 

Michael smirked. Without even looking at his cards, he set them facedown and wriggled in his seat. 

“Oh, Guerin…” Alex said, glancing down and then putting his face in his hands and laughing. 

Maria cackled as Michael held aloft his underwear—white cotton with classic little red hearts. 

“Ooh, aren’t those mine, anyway?” Maria asked with a sly grin, checking her cards. 

“Not yet,” Michael suggested, and looked at his cards. Well, shit, two Jacks. Time to give one of those away. 

“Your naked ass is on a wooden chair, Michael,” Alex was still lamenting. “Dealer takes one.” 

“One,” Maria said. 

Michael’s jaw tightened with focus as he peered through the card on the top of the deck: a nine of hearts. That worked. He discarded the Jack. “One as well.” 

Cheating to lose didn’t count, right?

A few hands later left Michael finally betting his hat, his last article of clothing. 

“If you’re gonna stay in next round, you’re gonna have to get creative,” Alex said, taking two cards this time and betting his jacket again. “Or maybe just take a nap and sober up while I demolish DeLuca over here.” 

“Bring it on, Manes.” Maria bet Michael’s belt this time, and didn’t take any cards. 

“Well, shit,” Alex said. “I’d fold, but I really want to see what Michael’s going to bet next.” 

“I mean, isn’t that obvious, or do I have to sit my naked ass down on your card table?” Michael said.  _ Now  _ this was his kind of game. “Me.” 

“Ooh!” Maria squealed. 

“Oh, that’s no fair!” Alex protested. 

“Don’t be a sore loser, you can win me next round.” 

“Ha!” Maria said, hauling Michael towards her. “Like I’m not going to quit while I’m ahead.” 

“Not so fast. I paid to see those cards, DeLuca. And his.” 

“Oh, fine, you brat,” Maria said, and threw down a three of a kind. 

“Oh my God, you were bluffing?” Alex said, sounding betrayed. “Maria Amy DeLuca, it’s like I don’t even know you!” 

“What do you even care? You won!” Maria said. 

“Oh, hey, I did,” Alex said, and beamed at Michael. “Any chance I can cash out now?” 

“NO!” Maria and Michael said together. 

“I still have your leg,” Maria pointed out. 

“That’s...technically assault,” Alex pointed out, though he didn’t sound worried.

“It was literally the first thing you bet,” Michael said. 

Alex raised an eyebrow, not enjoying being called out on the truth, but he seemed willing to play along. “And you seem a lot less drunk than you were a minute ago.” 

“Maybe, maybe not,” Maria said, and laughed. “ I should warn you, I don’t normally use my psychic thing for cards, but I’m...motivated now.” 

“How do you suggest we end this? We could be back and forth all night.” 

“And  _ then  _ what am I good for, right?” Michael asked, tongue peeking out as he grinned. Then he took the deck from the center of the table, also seeming much less drunk than he had been. “Five card draw, stripped deck. Seven to ace, all in.” 

Alex and Maria stared at him, as though surprised he had spoken. He also was way too comfortable being completely naked.

“You seem to know a lot about poker for someone who just lost like nine straight hands.”

“I’m not just a pretty face for you two to fight over,” Michael grinned, flicking through the cards, removing anything below a 7. “Flush ranks above a full house and below four of a kind.”

He liked to watch Maria and Alex recalibrate these odds in their heads. They were both brilliant, probably both of them counted cards to some extent, and both were also brilliantly competitive, so Michael dealt and then slapped his hands on both their piles. 

“And if either one of you acts like a sore loser or a douchebag winner to each other, I’m going home to my airstream and my right hand, even if I gotta walk there naked, got it? Don’t ruin  _ my  _ night.” 

“Oh, you’re no fun, Guerin,” Maria said, trying to get her cards out from under Michael’s hand. “Fine, I promise.” 

“Kiss on it,” Michael said. 

Maria stood up, leaning over the table and giving him a great view of her tits (she hadn’t bothered putting her shirt back on) as she leaned in to kiss him. He released her cards. 

“You, too,” Michael told Alex, letting Alex grip his wrist and helping him by leaning in for it. 

“What do we get if we behave?” Alex asked, bemused by Michael taking some modicum of charge of the situation. 

“Me. Always,” Michael said. He actually felt his face heating up, not because he was the prize of their little competition, but because he had finally admitted as much out loud. Michael had never mattered much, and now he was  _ worth  _ fighting over. ( _ Civilly _ .) “I’ll make it good for the winner. Loser gets to wait until tomorrow.”

“Fair,” Alex said. 

“Sounds good,” Maria agreed. 

Both of them shifted in their seats. Michael smirked. 

“Okay, what can I deal you?” Michael asked, as Alex sat there rearranging his cards thoughtfully, and Maria looked like she was sweating trying to not get too excited about how high her hand was. 

“I’ll take two,” Alex said. 

Maria made a face that might have made Michael fall in love with her all over again if he hadn’t already. 

“...One,” she said finally. “No, two. No. One.” 

Michael snorted. Alex’s face was soldier-impassive. 

Michael dealt the cards. “Anyone want to sweeten the pot?” he suggested, like stirring a hornet’s nest, like playing with fire with gasoline-soaked hands. He loved this.

Alex and Maria both glared sharply at him, and then looked at each other, like they were appraising the other for what they wanted most. 

“My mom’s famous enchiladas. Made by me. Enough for leftovers,” Maria put in. 

Alex made a noise that sounded like it was barely tamped down excitement, though he revealed nothing on his face. “You know I can’t compete with that. How about...I’ll fix your laptop? Or get you a new one.” 

“Holy shit, the enchiladas are not  _ that  _ good!” Maria laughed. 

“They really are, Maria. I have a bunch of old laptops I could refurbish for you, honestly.” 

“Well, before you can take it back—” Maria said, and laid out her cards. A flush. 

_ “God damn it _ !” Alex shouted, all the emotion he had been concealing behind a poker face exploding into laughter. Full house, which ordinarily would have won, were it not for Michael’s variant rules. 

Maria cheered, throwing her arms up. “Mama’s got a new laptop!” 

“ _ Uuuugh _ ,” Alex said, clearly upset about losing and trying not to show it. 

“Well, I’ll give you your leg back,” Maria said magnanimously. “If you let me make you enchiladas, anyway.” 

“Do  _ not  _ patronize me right now,” Alex said, trying to scowl against the smile on his face. 

Meanwhile, Maria dragged Michael to his feet and tossed him his hat, boots, and underwear. “Get dressed, baby, I’m taking you home.” 

Alex groaned again, putting his head in his hands. “This was a terrible idea, I am  _ such  _ a sore loser...get out of here.” 

Michael paused with one boot off and one boot on to kiss Alex. “I’ll let you take it out on me tomorrow.” 

“Oh, you better be ready, mister,” Alex said, kissing him back. 

Maria smacked Michael with his own belt on the ass. “Let’s go, pretty boy. Don’t keep me waiting!” As she left she called back to Alex, “Friday. We’ll be back! Enchiladas! Prepare yourself!” 

Michael gave Alex a shrug and trailed after her. 

“He’ll be fine, you know,” Maria said, once they were in the car—the stress of competition and several hours had killed Maria’s buzz, though Michael was still feeling kind of floaty, probably as much from the recreational libations as from the high he always got from being the center of Maria and Alex’s attention. “He’s still got your handprint. He’ll have a good night feeling what you feel.  _ I _ always do.” 

Michael laughed nervously. “Is he gonna like feeling what it’s like to have sex with a girl?” 

“I don’t think it’s that specific. But if you’re asking me to peg you you can just come right out and say it,” Maria replied. 


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m not asking for anything,” Michael said, letting her shove him down onto her bed on his back His hat tumbled off, and he grinned, putting his hands behind his head. “You  _ won  _ me, fair and square. I’m yours.”

Maria beamed. “I know I did, baby. I’m just deciding what to do with you. Taking requests.” 

“Really?” 

Maria scrunched up her face thoughtfully. “I mean, I’m always taking suggestions, but the buck stops here.”

“And  _ that’s  _ what I cheat at cards to achieve,” Michael drawled, relaxing his body as an invitation. 

“Oh, you brat. Clearly we’re going too easy on you, if you think you can cop that kind of attitude.” Maria reached under the bed and tossed him a pair of soft cuffs. “Go brush your teeth, and rinse good, and come back wearing these. Cuffed in front. You know, why don’t you shave, too?” 

Michael chuckled, licking his lips in anticipation. “Anything else?” 

“I mean, if you haven’t fingered yourself open recently, you should probably do that, too.” Maria tossed him a bottle of lube. “Don’t be long.” 

“That’s quite a list,” Michael said. 

“One more thing. Leave the boots  _ on _ .” 

…

That was how Michael found himself on his hands and elbows wearing nothing but his boots, a pair of handcuffs, and a  _ blindfold _ . 

“How’s that, not too tight?” Maria asked, patting the back of his head. 

“No, it’s fine.” His breath was a little shuddery, though. The blindfold was new, and Michael wasn’t sure yet how he felt about it. It was kind of funny how comparatively vanilla it was, and yet how totally unsteady it made him feel.

“You don’t like it? We can take it off.” 

“Worried I might get lost,” Michael admitted. The blindfold seemed to narrow his focus, which was always good, but it also isolated him with his thoughts. That wasn’t always a good thing. 

Maria leaned down to kiss him, and the touch surprised him, making him jerk back. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Maria purred, rubbing the back of his neck. “Like a skittish pony. Don’t you sometimes cover a pony’s eyes to keep them calm?” 

“ _ No _ . And ponies are assholes.” 

“Suits you, then. Except your legs are a little long.” Maria smacked his ass. “Widen that stance, now, I’m going to give you a tail…” 

“ _ DeLuca... _ ”

“Alright, it’s not an  _ actual  _ tail. Though it does plug into the wall,” she continued, stringing a cord intentionally along his leg so he knew it was there.

“Wonder what that’s for?” Michael asked, grunting softly as she began nudging something wide but well-slicked against his rim, pushing steadily until it breached him. “Fuck that’s—”

“It’s not too big. You can take it.”

“I was gonna say cold,” Michael laughed, his body tightening and then relaxing enough that she slid it all the way in up to the flared base. The base didn’t feel like it tapered all that much, like he was still stretched wide around it, but maybe not being able to see how big it was was messing with him. 

“Well, it won’t be cold long,” Maria told him, and without any warning the plug started—well, not  _ vibrating _ , precisely, though maybe that, too—arcing with electricity. 

“Fuck!” Michael cried, rocking forward and trying to sit up all at once. 

“Oh, you like that, then? I thought you might.” 

“I, ah—” Michael shuddered, spine arching and teeth gritting. The first few—zaps?—vibrations?—were startling, but when he relaxed into them, rolled his hips into them, felt them directly against his prostate, he moaned, shuddering with arousal. In moments he found himself coming untouched, way too fast, onto the towel she’d put beneath him. Oh, yeah, he  _ definitely  _ liked this. “Ah, fuck. Yeah. Fuck!” 

“There’s a good boy, see?” Maria said, and rubbed along his spine. He felt and heard her move around in front of him, and then her hand was on the back of his neck again. “I’m not going to let you get lost, baby, come here.” 

Michael let her draw him in, and he moaned as he smelled her cunt and lurched forward. He dropped against the mat, negotiating his bound hands to one side so he could eat her out like a starving man. 

“Ow! Easy!” she laughed, as his nose connected a little harder than was probably comfortable for either of them. “Now you just—keep going like that. And we’re going to see how long it takes to charge you up.”

“There are easier ways to charge your phone,” Michael pointed out in a pause to wet his lips. 

“Not nearly as fun. I’ll stop when you make me come twice, so you decide how long that takes,” she said. “Alex thinks the kink, the, the bondage and shit might have had something to do with how buck-wild you went the other night, but  _ I _ think it’s the—mm, Michael!” 

He grunted against her clit, licking a little too urgently while she moaned in response. 

“No, it’s—” he tried to say, but of course his mouth was busy, “hang on,” and if he brought her off quickly it was only because this wasn’t conducive to conversation, and he was actually eager to talk. 

“Whoa, shit,” Maria said, panting as she came and Michael licked her down from it, and then back up. She reached for the control box, turning up the voltage a fraction, which made Michael actually whimper in response. 

She and Alex had talked about safe limits as much as they could without involving Liz or the other aliens—for now—but the fact that Michael  _ liked  _ it so much definitely conflicted with the fact that electricity was the one thing that they knew could  _ kill  _ aliens. So they stayed cautious about it, well below safe human limits. These seemed to work quite well for Michael, anyway, and now, Maria could almost feel the charge tingling through his lips and tongue. 

“It’s—the charge is different—it’s—” Michael mumbled against the inside of her thigh, sounding very lost, indeed. 

“More eating. Talk after,” Maria instructed, redirecting his mouth where she wanted it. 

Michael moaned and she saw a shudder go through his whole body at that, so she knew it was the right thing to say. His tongue was like a machine, like the best sex toy she had ever had, because he worked with precision, sensing—or having committed to memory—her every need, how long to spend licking her with the flat of his tongue before he went to little circles or sucking her hard at the very end, doing this little flicking thing with his tongue that should be illegal.

“You know,” Maria said, after choking off a scream as she came pulling his hair, “if you ever realize how good you are at that, we could flip the whole relationship dynamic. I’d do literally  _ anything  _ to get you to put your tongue on me, Michael.” 

And Michael found himself swelling with pride as much as with arousal for that, and he hummed where he rested his head against her thigh, still smelling her. The blindfold was a little damp from sweat or maybe her juices, but it didn’t bother him so much now. “Good thing I like this arrangement just fine.” 

Maria smiled. “Good, baby. Me, too.”

She turned to the box and dialed down the electrostimulation, leaving only a low vibration. She left his face right where it was, where he could smell her, but tossed a blanket over him. “You like this new toy I got you?” 

“Uh.  _ Yeah _ . You bought this for  _ me _ ?” Michael asked, and if he hadn’t been wearing the blindfold Maria might have seen how this soured his mood a little. 

“Only the best for my baby,” she said, scratching his back. “Did it hurt?” 

That distracted him. “No, I don’t—a little. Not like the violet wand.” 

“That was definitely a higher voltage,” she said, “but this was a more sensitive area.” 

“Yeah. I got that,” Michael huffed. 

“So it’s not the pain that gets you going?” 

“I—I dunno. The pain is different. That and the bondage and the—being good for you, are like, one category I really really like. That my brain really likes. Keeps it occupied, or—quiet, or whatever. And then the, uh—the—”

“Electrostim?” 

“Yeah? That just does—something really weird and amazing to my body.” Michael buried his face against her soft thigh like he was hiding, even though he was already wearing a blindfold. “Fits my theory that we’re—engineered. I don’t know. Maybe I’m an android? I dunno. You electrostim me and I feel  _ turned on _ . Like, not sexually. Literally.” 

Maria was silent for a moment, and then she tugged up on the blindfold, peering down at Michael and running her fingers through his hair. When he was ready, Michael peered up at her, almost shyly, through one eye. Maybe the blindfold had really helped him open up, he realized, since he blushed to meet her eyes now. 

“But I don’t know,” he stammered. “It’s just a hypothesis. Noah said we were clones, that we’re royal, that—Max and Izzy aren’t even my siblings—” 

“Michael, shh,” Maria said, running her hands over his neck and shoulders and everywhere she could reach. “Whatever you are, I love learning more about you, together. I love making you feel good, and safe, and quiet. And I’m not going to lie, I like thinking about you as my sex toy that needs literal charging…” 

Michael snorted, looking away, but he couldn’t look away for long. “I like it, too. You don’t—you don’t think I’ll screw this up?” 

Maria laughed. “Baby, no. Your self-sabotaging bullshit days are over now you’ve got Mommy and Daddy looking after you.” 

“Ugh, please not that,” Michael said. “In the heat of the moment,  _ maybe _ , but—” 

“Mistress and Master?” 

“Worse!” Michael laughed, rolling off her. 

“Dominatrix and Dom?” Maria cackled. 

“Just, just girlfriend and boyfriend, okay?” Michael said, leaning up to kiss her neck, since he hadn’t been invited to kiss her lips, yet. “Who I’d give the stars to, if I could.”

“That’d be a good start,” Maria said, and as she kissed his lips, still tasting like her, she wrapped her arms and legs around him like she never planned to let go. 


	4. Chapter 4

“Okay, it’s way after dark. Did he text you?” Alex said suddenly. 

He was sitting at his bar, factory re-setting and updating Maria’s old laptop. There was a lot of just waiting, so he was mostly watching Maria move about his kitchen with confidence and making an unholy mess about it, since Alex was on clean-up duty. Or maybe he’d make Guerin do it, since he was late. 

Smelling enchiladas for two hours and not getting to eat anything was maybe making him a little grumpier about it than he needed to be. 

“Dunno,” Maria said, checking her phone. “Not since...3:13, when he texted both of us.” 

Alex looked at his texts again. 

_ Michael: working late tonight. Catch you after. _

He frowned. “Did that mean...he’s not coming?” 

“No way Guerin would miss enchiladas,” Maria said. “Why, did he say something to you?”

“No, I just—he wouldn’t work after dark, would he?” 

Maria looked up, and looked at the time. “Oh, geez, it is late, I’m sorry. We’re eating at Evans time, I guess. I say we start eating without him, he’ll probably be here any minute.” 

Alex looked uncomfortable by this. “Let me just call him.” 

Maria tried not to let her amusement at Alex’s concern show on her face. “Okay. I’ll make you a plate. Christmas?”

“Which one’s hotter?” 

“The red, I think.” 

“More red, then, thanks,” Alex said, the phone already up to his ear. Then he frowned, pulling it back from his face. 

“Everything okay?” Maria prompted. 

“Says it’s disconnected. Should we be worried?” 

“I know today’s payday for him, and sometimes he runs out of minutes at the end of the month,” Maria said, setting a plate in front of Alex. “But.... _ should _ we be worried? Mr. Contingency Plans?” 

Alex, heartened by the arrival of food, brightly presented with black beans, lime wedge, and lots of cheese as requested, covered in red and green meaty sauces, found it hard to be properly concerned, at least right away. “I don’t know, DeLuca, we have an alien boyfriend. Literally anything could happen. He could be abducted, experimented on, either of his siblings could be having a crisis they need to sacrifice Michael to solve, I  _ dunno _ ...”

Maria laughed! “Okay, you are hangry, mister.” 

Alex sighed and stabbed at his meal while Maria joined him at the bar, on the other side of all the laptops. After a minute of angry eating:

“It is really good, Maria. I think I might cry.” 

“I won’t tell Guerin,” Maria promised solemnly. 

“Tell  _ Guerin  _ whatever you want. Don’t tell the Ortechos.” 

“Oh, they get mad at me for putting meat in it,” Maria laughed, waving a hand. 

“And it’s  _ so good _ …” Alex fake-sobbed, and soon they were laughing and not at all worried about where Michael was when he finally staggered in after 9:00, fragrant enough that they smelled him from the door. 

“Michael!” Maria cried, half in delight, half accusatory. “There you are!” 

Michael looked like a deer in headlights, like he was half-surprised to find Maria there. “Yeah, I...oh.” 

His face, flushed with sweat, went pale, and then defensive, just as quickly. “Oh,  _ fuck _ , is it Friday?” 

“Luckily we saved some for you,” Maria said. “Though you’ll have to heat it up.”

“Where have you been?” Alex demanded, sterner than he meant, and caught himself sounding like his father, his worst trait, and had to explain. “We were worried about you.  _ I _ was worried.” 

“I’m sorry, man,” Michael said, feeling weirdly torn between wanting to flee or fight, but knowing already that he did not like this. “I—I just—I had to work late.” 

Alex winced internally, backing down outwardly. “It’s fine. You don’t have to— _ report _ to me. To us. I just—was worried.” 

“Why don’t you go shower and I’ll fix up a plate for you?” Maria offered. 

Michael looked pained. “Uh...I, uh. Yeah. Thanks. A small one, though. I...ate.” 

Both of them realized at the same time that he was holding a Taco Bell cup. 

Maria let her surprise show on her face, though she did laugh. “My God. It’s like I don’t know you.” 

She was beginning to feel like she  _ didn’t  _ know him, as it didn’t escape her notice how his shoulders were hunched.  _ Surely  _ he didn’t expect her to  _ hit  _ him, though she supposed that was a hard instinct to lose. 

“I’m sorry, I just, I—I forgot. And my phone—” 

“Yeah, if you’re low on minutes, can you please let one of us know so we can top you up?” Alex began, again not quite meaning to, not with Michael barely in the door. 

“I just topped it up on the way home!” Michael shouted, bristling at the suggestion that he might need to ask them for money. “It was down for like three hours, man!” 

“He got the disconnected message and thought you’d been abducted,” Maria said, trying to dissipate the tension with a small joke. “Go get in the shower, babe. I’ll make you a plate. Gotta wash that nasty Taco Bell down.”

“O-okay,” Michael said, still looking a little shell-shocked as he went past them to the bathroom. 

Maria waited until he and his possible alien super-hearing were gone before she stabbed a finger into the center of Alex’s chest. “Don’t harass him about money, Alex!” she hissed. 

“We need to be able to get a hold of him, Maria,” Alex replied sternly, though he rubbed his face, knowing he had screwed up. “I’m sorry, I’m in a weird mood. I should leave…” 

“Alex, this is your house.”

“Oh, my God,” Alex said, and moved to sit down. “I’m a mess.” 

“You either need to drink more, or less. I’ll take Guerin home with me if you’re worried you’ll break him.” 

“No, I just—I don’t know. I guess I was more worried than I thought. And he just strolls in like nothing’s—you cooked all this food! I’m mad. I’m allowed to be mad at him?” 

Maria shrugged, stepping in close, slotting her legs on either sides of his knees so she could pull him into a hug. “I don’t know, Al.” 

Alex pressed his face to Maria’s shoulder, trying to block out the image of Michael flinching like he expected to be hit after one lousy missed date. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with  _ him _ ? He knew first-hand what it was like to live with an abuser. How had he not been more careful? 

(Why hadn’t Michael said anything? How could they go from “hit me” as part of  _ sex  _ and then suddenly be here?) 

Alex took a few deep breaths like this, but he and Maria broke apart when they heard the water shut off. 

“You gonna be okay?” Maria asked. 

Alex nodded. He pulled Maria’s laptop back onto his lap to start downloading a few more software packages. The work, something he could control and was good at, was soothing, as was the view of Maria dumping vats of leftover enchilada sauce into tupperware. “I love you,” he said after a minute. “Thank you.” 

She smiled like she knew it was more than just for the enchiladas. “Love you, too.” 

In the shower, Michael got himself together, at least by some definition. Mostly he just felt stupid for working himself into such a stupor that he forgot enchilada night. He just got offered more hours from Sanders, and he was only thinking how it would mean an extra $50 for the week, so he didn’t exactly think beyond that. And by the time he was done he went on autopilot to get his phone topped up and after that he was ravenous and then and then—

He was still an  _ idiot _ . He could focus on that. Maybe without the usual chip on his shoulder. Unlikely, but he could always try. 

So he came out with damp hair and soft clothes and a sheepish look. “Yo, sorry for being an idiot, DeLuca…” 

Maria only smiled and wagged a finger at him as she held out a plate of food. “I oughta spank you.” 

“You know that only encourages me,” Michael replied, taking it and a kiss. “I totally should have made myself puke in the bathroom so I could enjoy two helpings.” 

“Don’t be gross. Just eat,” Maria laughed. 

Alex put the laptop aside, shaking his head. He stayed sitting down while Michael stood up to eat, just shoveling food into his face at the kitchen counter. They hadn’t even moved to the table. “Okay, if I call you now, your phone works? Sorry I freaked out earlier, my brain went to the worst—”

“It’s okay, Alex,” Michael said, quickly, trying to feel like this was sweet and not suffocating. “I’ll keep it on.”

“If you want—” Alex began, but Maria grabbed his shoulder and crushed the life out of it, with a strength that surprised Alex. 

“—We were thinking about putting a movie on, if you’re not gonna crash,” Maria cut in. 

Michael recognized the lifeline for what it was, and took it. “Yeah, something I’ve seen before? In case I do conk out?” 

“You’re the one with the movie deficiency,” Alex said with a laugh, letting the argument go, and only Michael really registered that this was yet another way that being raised by wolves would have been a step up from what he got. 

“How about a star war? I’m kinda feeling  _ Phantom Menace _ .” 

Alex groaned—there went Michael’s attempt to placate him—but Maria cheered. 

“Come on, Al, we live in a world where  _ The Rise of Skywalker  _ happened. Take it where you can get it,” Maria said, nudging him. “I love  _ Phantom Menace _ . Ewan MacGregor...Liam Neeson…”

“Darth Maul,” Michael suggested, grinning. “Do not sit here and try to pretend you never challenged me to a lightsaber battle and called Darth Maul.” 

Alex tamped down on a smile, but it eventually broke through. “Fine, fine!”

“You know, that’s a good trio Halloween costume idea, too, actually. Amidala, Anakin, and Obi-Wan?” Maria suggested.

“I wanna be Amidala,” Michael laughed. 

“Mm. The nightgown in  _ Revenge of the Sith _ ? Sign me up!” Maria agreed. “I want to be Anakin! Darth Vader but before he becomes extra crispy. That hood would look so sexy on me.” 

“You know I’m a purist,” Alex said, hunting through his movies to put in the DVD. “There's always Luke, Han, and Leia.” 

“Hey! We could be the twins! You know I always suspected Luke had a thing for Han, too…” 

The talk settled Michael’s heart rate a little: future planning always did. Not because  _ he  _ liked planning himself, but because he knew Maria and Alex did. And if they were making future plans with him in their lives, he hadn’t fucked up too massively yet. 

That thought relaxed him enough that he was passed out before they reached the Gungan City. 


	5. Chapter 5

The next week was rough, because Alex handled him with kid gloves and Maria kept mothering him.

They texted and called less, like he couldn't be trusted to keep track of how many minutes or texts he had left on his plan and they didn't want to use them up except for when they really needed to get a hold of him. So his phone went from a beloved connection to them, all hearts and _ I love yous _ , to a ball and chain. Their texts looked more like ones from Isobel, who only ever texted him when she needed something or she was mad at him.

So he started ignoring his phone more, and working late more, and staying in the airstream most nights because he hadn’t been invited to either partner’s place. And he started to get bitter about it, even as he knew it was his own fault for being an asshole no one wanted around, because didn’t that make for the best thing to be bitter about? 

And by the time Friday rolled around, and he could use the extra cash, yes, he laid down some money that he could beat Wyatt in a game of pool, and yes he cheated a little bit, but he needed the money and who better to take money from than the town racist ringleader? 

It wasn’t  _ his  _ fault Wyatt was a sore loser and it ended in a fight. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Maria said, once she and Alex got him outside, while Max took Wyatt home to call his parole officer—small favors, everyone in the bar saw Wyatt throw the first punch so even if his daddy was the Mayor, he wasn’t getting out of this one. “I thought you were  _ over  _ this macho posturing bullshit!” 

Instead of letting himself be hurt by that, Michael put up his emotional wall of a shrug and a smile. His lip was a little bloody, and it was the first time he  _ felt  _ something in a week. “Not my fault Wyatt’s terrible at pool and a sore loser.” 

Maria felt the wall go up, and kicked futilely against it. She tapped him once in the chest with her fist before Alex pulled her back. “God  _ damn  _ it, Guerin. You are too damn much, sometimes. I don’t know what this is but you better pull it together, or—”

“Or what? You’ll spank me?” Michael asked, goading her. 

Maria looked like she had been slapped, her eyes igniting. “ _ Or _ I don’t want to see you in my bar for a week.” 

“ _ Okay _ ,” Alex said, seeing this fight had gone on long enough. He grabbed Michael and hauled him towards his car. “I’ve got him, Maria. We’ll cool down and revisit this in the morning.” 

Maria, still seething but recognizing what Alex was doing for what it was, appreciated it enough to nod shortly and turn to go back inside. 

“There should be a hundred bucks lying on the table in there. That’s mine!” Michael called after her, figuring he’d already pissed her off, so why not actually benefit from what got him into this in the first place? When she turned around, he was grinning that smug, stupid grin. 

Maria actually turned back around and threw herself at Michael, and Alex had to hold her back bodily. “That’s  _ all  _ you care about, isn’t it? Not that you scared me or—I could  _ strangle _ you, Guerin!”

“Hey, everything’s temporary, DeLuca,” Michael said, throwing his arms wide like he wanted her to hit him (and he did, oh, God, he did, anything to make her words hurt less). “Why do you think I’m hedging my bets dating both of you? Eventually the sex isn’t gonna be enough.” 

He meant  _ for you to still want me _ , but he didn't say that, so it sounded as much like he would dump them the second things stopped being good enough for  _ him _ . Which was was ridiculous, but he always was good at walls, even on accident.

Maria frothed in rage while Alex’s usually tight control of his emotions crumbled in surprised hurt. 

(Huh. Usually scoring one like that felt better.)

“Okay. You need to go home and—and sort out whatever the fuck is wrong with you right now,” Alex said, bucking himself up and keeping both arms around Maria, but determined to not let one bad night ruin this. “This conversation’s over. Walk away. We’ll talk about this in the morning. And answer your goddamn texts, please.”

Whatever part of Alex’s words that might have started getting through to Michael, made him realize he was being unreasonable and cooling off would help everyone just completely flatlined at the mention of his phone.  _ His goddamned hand-me-down pay-as-you-go phone that only existed for other people to need him with _ . 

“Oh fuck you,” Michael said, and pulled his phone out of his pocket and launched it into the middle of the highway with a loud crack. 

Alex and Maria just stared as he got into his truck and peeled away, tires screeching as he crunched right over his cell phone.

Of course they just let him go, Michael thought. Everyone always did, eventually. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured, since we're all already crying about Michael Guerin, anyway....
> 
> (Scream at me in the comments!)


	6. Chapter 6

Michael was only here for Isobel.

It was honestly the first time he remembered being somewhere that wasn’t work or his airstream in several days. If getting drunk alone in his bunker was cheaper than getting drunk at the Wild Pony—when he wasn’t banned and was paying his own tab—it was even  _ cheaper  _ to get drunk on Isobel’s dime at a charity auction in honor of Noah Bracken to benefit the ACLU. 

She even let him mix acetone in with Noah’s good bourbon and walk around with it in a tall tumbler that looked like a glass of iced tea, hold the ice. God bless sisters who knew you were dealing with shit, let you deal with shit how you wanted to, and didn’t ask questions about it. 

Max at one point had tried to corner him to talk about Maria and Alex, but as usual he made the conversation 110% more stupid and uncomfortable and judgy than it needed to be, so Michael dodged that one with his usual finesse. It was kind of hard to tell how mean he was being when he couldn’t really feel anything. 

“Sometime between eating all the free food and puking up all the free food, I need you to do me a favor,” Isobel said, meeting up with him while he was in the middle of professing his love to a cheese ball. 

“Anything,” Michael said, not looking at her. 

“Lindsay’s here.” 

Michael huffed. “Which one?” 

“The bitch.” 

“I thought you said they’re all bitches.” 

“Lindsay  _ Ramirez _ . I think she’s going to bid on the Navajo rug and she won’t bid what it’s worth.” 

“Oh, yeah, because telling a woman of color what she should pay for Diné art is a  _ real  _ good look on a white chick,” Michael said. Not because he cared or anything, but just to hassle his sister. 

(If only Maria could see him now, though, she might think she had him well-trained.) 

“Oh, shut up.” Isobel frowned at him. “It shouldn’t go for anything less than five grand, if 30% goes to the charity and the rest goes to the artist. But  _ I _ don’t want to buy it, I just want to bid her up. I need to know how high she’ll go.” 

Michael laughed. He loved being related to a supervillain, sometimes. Reminded him he was hovering somewhere around ‘petty thug’ even on his worst days. It was nice having the moral high ground sometimes. 

Here was the kicker, though: “What do you want  _ me  _ to do about it?”

“Go talk to her! Bat those pretty eyelashes and find out how high she’ll go.” 

Michael took another sip of his drink. “And you can’t because…?” 

“Oh, she’ll know what  _ I’m  _ up to, I couldn’t possibly.” Isobel tried the cheese ball, too, and made a noise. “Oh, that  _ is  _ good. You know she’s always had a thing for you, you’ll get her talking right away. Maria and Alex aren’t even here.” 

Michael stiffened, dropping the cracker he’d been going for, suddenly not hungry anymore. Time for more whiskey. “I don’t think they’d care if they were.” 

“...Though they’re both pillars of the community, they  _ should  _ be here...” Isobel said, off on her own train of thought as she glared around the room. 

“Yeah, okay, whatever, I’ll talk to her,” Michael said, mostly to get her to shut up about Maria and Alex. 

“Thanks, bro!” she said sweetly, taking the glass of whiskey-acetone from him and replacing it with a glass of actual iced tea. “Your breath smells like nail polish remover. I’ll give it back after.”

“Blackmail,” Michael said, but even he supposed he should probably stop drinking. There were plenty of other vices he excelled at. Like whoring himself around at Isobel’s insistence...

“Lindsay, how’re you doing?” Michael asked, because The Life of the Party was an easy little number for him to slip into, maybe because he’d always really wanted to be one. “Have you tried the cheese ball? Please don’t, it’s  _ terrible _ .” 

“Mikey!” she exclaimed, already way too friendly, using his high school nickname. “Haha, that means it’s good, right? I know how you operate.” 

“What, me? Here for the free food? Never!” Michael replied, leaning into a caricature of himself. “I know where Isobel keeps the good booze so you just let me know when you need a little something to get you through.” 

Lindsay laughed a little airily, but moved closer into his personal space, like she was scenting him or something. The  _ ping  _ Michael normally got from being desired was a little dulled, but it was there. Maybe if he hadn’t missed being wanted so much he might not have let her invade his space, let her  _ smell  _ him, but he did. “I’ll remember that.” 

Michael took a deep breath. “So...what’re you—anything you’re looking at in the auction?” 

She glared at him, and he raised his hands in surrender. 

“Do  _ I _ look like I’d spend money on any of this stuff?” 

“You bought that weird piece of pottery a few years back,” she pointed out. 

Yeah, that had been like, five years back, and it was a piece of alien tech that Isobel had somehow moronically let get out onto the auction table and had to call him at the last minute to bid for. “Oh, yeah, see. I don’t even know where I put that.” 

Lindsay laughed again, a flirty laugh this time. “You’re a mess, Mikey. Why don’t you show me where that good booze is at, hm?” 

Michael winced inwardly, but he hadn’t gotten the information Isobel wanted yet, and no one had looked at him like they had wanted to void his warranty in over a week, and Maria and Alex deserved better than him, so he should just let them go, right? 

“Yeah, come on. We can get an up close look at that, uh, rug…?” He winked at her. “I swear that’s not a euphemism.” 

“Ooh! You’re terrible!” 

…

“Liz, there’s no way there’s going to be anything remotely in my price range here,” Maria complained, stomping up the back steps to enter through the kitchen. “It’s an auction put together by  _ Isobel Evans _ .”

“Well, we can at least enjoy the free food,” Liz said. “Anyway, you’re a pillar of the community! And sometimes I find things for the Crashdown, you know, something kitschy no one else wants.” 

“So then we’re just going to bid against each other,” Maria said, and then her eyes narrowed, feeling like she was being buttered up. “Is Guerin going to be at this thing?” 

“What? No. I don’t know,” Liz lied, like a liar. 

Maria glared. A Max and Liz special, most likely. 

“I just think you should talk to him. If he is here. You guys have just hit a rough patch...” 

“Elizabeth, I don’t need you—” Maria said, and then sighed. “Fine!” she said, stomping in the back door, determined to give Michael another try only  _ after  _ she gave him a piece of her mind.

What she arrived just in time to see, however, was Lindsay Ramirez locking lips with Michael Guerin in a fucking  _ pantry _ . 

“Oh, shit,” Liz said, and then covered her mouth. 

Lindsay and Michael looked up, and if Lindsay managed to look contrite, Michael looked like he’d seen a ghost, if the ghost was a version of himself ever being happy again. 

“Oops!” Lindsay said. “We were just...talking about...carpet…”

“MICHAEL. GUERIN,” Maria said, her voice reaching a volume that stopped the party in the other room dead. She looked like she might have continued at that volume, but might have been too hurt, or too angry, to maintain it, and her voice cracked. “When a relationship is over, you usually let all parties involved know that first.” 

Michael didn’t say anything. What did you say to that?  _ No, honest, babe, sure, we were kissing, but it’s all a part of this auction espionage Isobel’s got me involved in...  _

“Oh, I’m sorry, were you two involved?” Lindsay asked, pointing between the two of them. “I heard he was with…” 

“Yeah. We  _ were _ ,” Maria said, and stormed off. 

Liz, whose eyes hadn’t adjusted back from their bugged-out  _ What the fuck did I just do?! _ , gave Michael a bewildered  _ I was trying to help you, how did you screw this up?! _ look before running back after Maria. “Maria! Maria!” 

Isobel stomped into the kitchen. “What’s going on back here? Did someone just leave?” 

“Michael was just telling me about the amazing cheese ball you’re serving,” Lindsay said, brushing past Isobel to rejoin the party. 

“Michael,” Isobel prompted, and stamped her foot. “What’s going on?” 

“She won’t go higher than three grand,” Michael said, not looking away from where Maria had run out the back door. Absently he wiped at his mouth. He felt sick, and turned back into the pantry. He grabbed two of the fullest liquor bottles he saw. “I’m gonna take these.” 

“Michael!” she complained, stamping her foot, but Michael was already gone. 


	7. Chapter 7

“Just take me home, Liz,” Maria said, on the edge of tears. 

“Maria, I’m sure it was just—there has to be some explanation for this—Michael’s just—” 

“Liz. Stop talking, please,” Maria said, and dialed Alex’s number. She didn’t let him get through the ‘hello’ before she spoke: “Alex, I need you to come over to my place. It’s about Michael.” 

“Maria? Is everything alright?” 

“No.” 

Maria hung up. 

The car was silent. 

“Does  _ your  _ alien freak pull shit like this?” Maria demanded, once the tears started to fall, anyway. 

“Uh,” Liz said, and swallowed. “No, he’s kind of—um. Well, sometimes he—” 

“Never mind. Stop talking,” Maria said, rummaging through Liz’s glove box for Subway napkins to wipe her eyes. “I want to talk to Alex.” Then she looked at Liz, sadly. “I’m sorry, I love you. I just—I could  _ murder  _ him right now.”

“No, no, I get it. Talk with Alex. Text me when you need me to come by with chocolate ice cream. Or, uh, I got a taser…?”

Maria laughed, because that was funny for multiple reasons.

…

“Oh, baby, what’s wrong?” Mimi asked, finding her daughter alone on the couch, crying. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, the aliens come in peace this time.” 

Maria threw herself into her mother’s arms. She could really use her mother in a lucid state right now, but Maria was grateful she was still here in any capacity. She sniffed. “It’s hard to remember that sometimes, Mama.” 

Mimi sighed. “Boy troubles?” 

Maria sat back, wiping her face, smearing mascara everywhere. “Yeah. I guess.” And then she thought,  _ Fuck it _ , and told her mother, “Alien boy troubles.” 

Mimi nodded solemnly, as though she knew from personal experience. “Those are the worst kind.” 

Maria laughed, in spite of herself. Her mom probably wouldn’t remember this conversation later, which was good, and in the meantime, it was probably going to be just as funny as it was sad. “He’s so dumb, Mama. He won’t let us help him. I think he wants me to hate him just because that's what he's used to.” 

“Does he love you?” Mimi asked suddenly, with some kind of clarity. 

Maria paused, giving that some thought. “Yes,” she said finally. “Except. Sometimes I’m not sure he knows what love is, really. How it works.” 

“Well, how can he? No home, no family, crash-landed here. You’re going to have to teach him.” 

_ God, if only her mother knew that not-lucid made so much sense right now.  _

Because Maria  _ knew  _ that, though she hadn’t wanted to admit it before, how she felt that gaping void inside Michael, hungry and dumb, an unsocialized animal, an emptiness so dark and sad it took on a life of its own. It was always there when she read him, when she could get past his walls. Sometimes it was sleeping, but it was always there. 

She had tried to tell herself it was an alien thing, like, maybe there was a void that was just a part of him she couldn’t understand because it wasn’t fully human, but she knew better. It was the part of him he talked about quieting. Maria started sobbing. “I think he loves me, but I’m not sure he knows I love him.” 

“Like this one,” Mimi continued, looking up, and Maria turned to see Alex standing in the door. Maria reached for him. 

“Don’t worry, Mimi, I know.” Alex gave her a sad little smile, joining them on the couch. “ _ You _ already taught me about love. You and Maria, Liz, Rosa, Uncle Jimmy... When things got rough for me at home, I always had you.”

Because Alex was beginning to get it, too. Michael had had  _ no one _ . Everything  _ was  _ temporary, for Michael.

“How long were you standing there?” Maria asked, wiping her eyes. 

“Long enough…. Maria, what did he  _ do _ ?” 

“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s an idiot.” 

Mimi DeLuca kissed her daughter’s brow. “I’m going to go make some tea. In case that sweet boy Michael shows up.” 

“Okay, Mama,” Maria said, watching her go sadly. She should have known better about everything. She knew what  _ actual  _ voids in someone felt like: she felt gaps in her mother’s aura all the time, like sand shifting away from her. The void inside Michael wasn’t just a void: it had a personality. She could glimpse it through cracks in his walls, in the shape of a dog chained to a tree.

“What did he do?” Alex asked again, more firmly this time. 

“He was making out with Lindsay Ramirez at Isobel’s auction.” 

Alex’s eyes got big. “Making out? Like—”

“Like, caught in a rundown between first and second base, Alex,” Maria snapped, feeling angry again. Angry at Lindsay, at herself, at Isobel, at Max, at Alex…at everyone who had ever hurt Michael, but she couldn’t bring herself to be angry at Michael, anymore. She took a deep breath. “We should go find him. I just—yelled at him, I don’t know why—I mean, I know  _ why _ . I don’t know what we’ve done  _ wrong _ , why he doesn’t...”

Alex was already going through his phone for Isobel’s phone number. “You yelled at him because you were rightly upset, and you have been for a while. Whatever you did wrong, we both did it.” 

“I never know how something like that is going to affect him! If it’s going to just roll off him like it's nothing, or—”

“Or obliterate him,” Alex said, with a sigh. He sent a text to Isobel inquiring about Michael’s whereabouts, and then looked up at Maria. “I know. Believe me, I know. Whatever you said to him, I would have done worse, I  _ have  _ done worse. Let’s just—find him. And figure this out. Figure out what he needs, and what we need, and if it’s going to work out...” 

He swallowed thickly, shaking his head a little. “We’ll make it work out.”

Maria threw her arms around Alex’s neck, and he buried his face in her hair. “I’m so glad I have you, Alex.” 

“Love you, too, Maria.” 

…

Their first mistake was waiting until nightfall to bring his siblings into the search in earnest.

How hard could it be, they thought, to find one loud-mouthed big-brained pissed off alien boy who wasn't even at his sister's house anymore? They checked Sanders', they checked the airstream, they checked his bunker, they checked the Pony and Alex's cabin. They even checked the Sheriff’s office. 

They also stuck together, sure they would find him quickly and neither ready to face him alone. That might have been another mistake, Alex's tactical mind berated him. So really, waiting until it was dark to get Isobel and Max involved was their second or third mistake. Hell, something was fractiously wrong with their entire  _ relationship _ , apparently, so this was probably the sixth or seventh mistake. 

“Yeah, Liz had me keeping an eye out,” Max said when Alex called him. “She didn’t give me the details but said she was worried about you three. Meet at the Crashdown? They’re just closing and Mr. Ortecho’s headed to a movie.” 

“Yeah,” Alex replied. “We haven’t checked there.”

They also hadn’t tapped their resident former expert in disappearing and ne’er-do-welling and drowning her sorrows. Rosa might be able to find him. Rosa would know better places to check, anyway. 

“...Okay, but I didn’t expect him to  _ kiss  _ her,” Isobel was defending herself when Maria and Alex got there, as Max and Liz squared off against her. “He clearly riffed on the script.” 

“What script,” Maria demanded, as Alex held the door for her, catching her jacket as it fell off her shoulders. ( _ Why couldn’t Alex just be straight and save them all this heartache when he was clearly the best boyfriend material this crappy town had to offer? _ Maria wondered, not for the first time.) But also her spidey-sense was tingling, if her spidey-sense could detect when Isobel Evans was fucking shit up. 

Liz, Rosa, Max, and even Kyle stood around, trying to look like they hadn’t been talking about them before they arrived. 

Isobel deflected, and  _ ooh _ , yeah, that was a Michael move. She recognized it too well. “I just asked him to  _ talk  _ to her! You know how he is!” 

“No. Isobel,” Maria snarled, advancing on her. “ _ I _ know how he is. And I know he would do anything for his sister, up to and including taking the fall for a murder he thought she commited. So tell me what  _ exactly  _ you told her to talk to him about.” 

“It was just a dumb auction thing! He’s good at flirting for information, you know that. Everyone knows that. It’s a skill that some of us in the family have and some of us don’t.” She tossed her hair and winked at Max, who just looked uncomfortable. 

“So you sent him to  _ flirt  _ with Lindsay?” Maria asked, calmly. She started removing her earrings. Alex saw Liz move back a hair, and Rosa move forward, different responses to sensing a fight. 

Isobel had no idea what was coming. “I mean, yeah. I didn’t ask him to kiss her. Or her to kiss him, I  _ know  _ you guys have your weird little  _ ménage à _ —” 

All Maria got in was a punch to the jaw before Rosa was on her, holding her back. Liz and Alex jumped in next, full seconds before a totally blindsided Max and Kyle also got in on trying to break up the fight, dragging the screaming women apart. To her credit, Isobel didn’t use her powers or try to fight back, really, and the empty Crashdown just erupted into a screaming match as Maria and Isobel kept hurling insults and Liz and Rosa tried to explain to Isobel slightly more reasonably than Maria what she had done wrong, while Kyle argued with Alex, and Max just tried to get everyone to calm down. 

Finally Alex gave up arguing with Kyle and leaned on Kyle’s shoulder to stand up on a chair. 

“ _ Okay, everyone shut up, _ ” he demanded in his Captain voice. 

Surprisingly, everyone went quiet. “Alright, so we know that Michael is in a bad place mentally and no one has seen him since two o’clock today. He doesn’t have his phone so we can’t track him. Any ideas where he might be?” 

“Oh, so now you need our help? I thought I didn’t  _ know  _ him.” Isobel snapped, holding an icepack Liz had brought against her chin. 

Max glared at her reproachfully. “When things get bad, he usually gets in his truck and goes camping. If he’s not out at Foster’s ranch, which is where he usually goes, he could be anywhere. But we can start there first. Me and Izzy will go together.” 

“I know a few places in town to check,” Rosa volunteered, and Liz nodded, pairing them off. “If he was gonna start self-medicating again, I still know where to ask around.” 

Kyle shrugged, having the least fun job of all. “I guess I can check the hospital, see if they took him in, or any John Does with...alien anatomy…” 

Alex stepped down from the chair, with Maria and Kyle’s help. “Thanks, everyone.”

Rosa was at his side now. Of all the reconnections after her death and resurrection, theirs had been the hardest on some level, because for Rosa, in the blink of an eye, Alex had become everything he had stood against in high school. And Alex couldn’t not see that betrayal in her eyes when he looked at her. He got enough of that from the mirror. 

Still, she made an effort, here, and so did he.

“If Michael wanted to punish himself, where would he go?” she asked. “Because that’s where he is right now. Wherever he’d be most miserable.” 

Alex’s face went a little pale, though he didn’t actually voice the first place that came to mind. Somehow he couldn’t get the words  _ the remains of the alien prison where his mother was tortured for seventy years  _ out of his mouth. “Uh. I don’t know. My dad tore that shed down a while ago. He might be...at the Emporium? Or under a bridge somewhere.” 

Rosa seemed to sense that he was evading her, so she just nodded and turned to take Liz’s hand. 

But the more Alex thought about it, the more he had a hunch he was right. It was bad, the worst place he thought Michael could go, but if he really felt his worst, maybe that was exactly where he was headed. 

They were in Alex’s SUV, but Maria was driving so Alex could ride shotgun, consulting maps and making phone calls. 

“Where are we going?” Maria asked, when they were alone in the car. “I’m sorry I tried to—”

“Don’t worry about it, I think she needed the scare. Head west on 70.” 

“What’s there?” 

“A place that used to be called Caulfield.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretend this is a version of Roswell New Mexico where everyone knows everyone's secrets lol


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is either the best or the worst time to be a malexa shipper. Enjoy some tortured psyche to match.
> 
> UPDATE: BEST TIME

Michael was in a wallowing mood. He wasn’t going to Caulfield because he wanted his mom (though he did, in his bones he wanted her, he missed her and didn’t even remember her). He didn’t deserve her.

He was definitely going to Caulfield because it was the most painful, punishing place he could think of, because he needed that. Especially since his ex-partners weren’t going to be giving him the punishment he needed any time soon. 

Fucked up once again. Left behind once again. Cause and effect. 

Draw on some walls? Don’t get adopted. Can’t control your powers? Exorcism. Get caught with Alex? Hand smashed. Break some glass? Get your mother and a prison full of alien refugee prisoners murdered. Girlfriend catches you making out with another woman? Get dumped. 

He drove over Caution tape surrounding the explosion, and looked out over the rubble. Twenty, maybe thirty people dead under all that? People like him? And who knew what else was under there, what all Caulfield housed. Alien tech, maybe. 

Even if it was all burnt to a crisp and atomized, Michael wanted to  _ see  _ it. Like rubbing a dog’s nose in shit, maybe he’d stop fucking up if he had to look it in the face. 

Michael kept driving into the center of the rubble, thrashing his tires and undercarriage, and when he couldn’t drive any further, he left the truck running and staggered out drunkenly. Yeah, he should really  _ not  _ have been driving.

He took another swig of the absolute  _ shit  _ that was the Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey he had accidentally grabbed, thinking maybe it was fair that he was still being punished as he strove not to feel anything. It would have been fitting, too, if he had crashed his truck, as drunk as he was. That would be poetic justice: fake a teenage drunk driving accident, die in your own. 

Only Michael wasn’t so lucky. He drank some more. 

He kicked at some of the rubble, aware he was crying, though he didn’t know why. He didn’t deserve to cry. 

Something glittered on the ground, and Michael almost ignored it as a piece of glass, but on the next pass it caught his eye again. 

He crouched unsteadily and picked it up. A gleaming fragment of alien tech, like his spaceship console, only this piece was the size of a pebble. He held it in his hand for a moment, and that definitely made him start sobbing. With a roar of rage, he threw it across the rubble. It skittered across the sand, and got...bigger…? 

Michael looked at the whiskey bottle, like the drink was playing tricks on him, and set out across the rubble after it. Now that he was looking for it, it almost looked like the whole place glittered. Not with glass, but with—with—

There was something  _ here _ .

(Oh, there were lots of things here, lots of dead bodies and buried secrets here, but  _ tech _ . There was alien technology here! Maybe enough to complete his ship!)

Michael took a deep breath and concentrated, holding his hand out over the ground. At first he was just trying to lift everything, all the dirt he could reach, but that was already over-extending his powers, and he groaned and stopped himself. Tried again. Slower. More finesse. Hell, it almost sobered him up. 

Grains of sand snaked into the air like they were tossed up on the wind, at first. Knowing there was something  _ here _ , he started sifting through the rubble, not with his hands, but with his brain. But it was like it had its own gravity, somehow, where if he lifted more it all kind of wanted to go together. So he started TKing rubble into the air all around him, beams and sheet metal and wood and glass and cement and—and maybe some of this was alien bio remains. He tried not to think about that. 

He wanted the tech, and tried to concentrate on it. He almost heard it speak to him. Was it a ship? A pod? A weapon? Something his mom built, or came here on? 

It was too heavy, too much, he—he felt it all slipping through his fingers and grabbed at the ship piece as everything else fell away. It was so small, even after all that work, barely bigger than a phone. Of  _ course  _ he couldn’t do this, it was like putting a novel back together from buckets of alphabet soup. It was too much. 

He had to bend over to barf, too. The cinnamon whiskey burned worse going the other way. 

Michael turned back to his truck, slowly. 

It was still idling, lights on. Michael took another swig of the whiskey, trying to guzzle it down, get rid of it, ugh, wash down the vomit. He lifted the hood, though it was hot to the touch. And then he put his hand on the positive and negative terminals of the battery at the same time. 

Sucking the juice out of a car battery hurt, like no kinky electrostim playing around could prepare him for. He might even have screamed. He dropped the whiskey bottle. He drained the battery, feeling powerful, and  _ angry _ , the kind of angry you could only ever feel perfectly at yourself, because only you knew yourself well enough to be this angry at what a piece of shit you were. 

When he returned to his task, Michael used his magnified powers to throw the rubble up in a cyclone surrounding the little opalescent connection to who he really was. He was sorting through the rubble at computer speeds, now, and started spinning it around him so he could see it all. What he didn’t care about dropped out of the air, always drawing more up from underneath him until he was spinning up a cyclone of rubble all around him. Cement, dropped, steel, dropped. 

He wanted alien. He wanted  _ his _ . 

Now he knew there was something here, he dug deeper, spun faster. Maybe Manes had had the rest of his ship this whole time. Maybe it was a  _ different  _ ship. Maybe it was a weapon of mass destruction and they really were a race of alien invaders intent on exterminating the human race. He closed his eyes, reaching down. Further down. 

(Digging himself a hole, because wasn’t that something he was good at?) 

The tornado started turning opalescent, glittering with alien fragments that started affixing themselves to the little piece, and Michael watched it grow, forming a hull, an engine,  _ guns _ , God, everything he ever wanted. It was tragically, stereotypically round, flying-saucer shaped, smaller than he thought it would be, a short-range ship or starfighter, maybe. He laughed in pure joy, forgetting about the fight, forgetting for a moment that no one on this planet loved him. 

Then he sighed, the smile fading. 

Because even if Michael maybe had a way off this damn planet for the first time in his life, he knew more than ever that he could never escape himself. Surely he would be just as much of a colossal a fuck up on any planet. 

…

Maria and Alex had been on the road less than an hour when Alex’s phone rang, the volume startling them both. It was Max. 

“I just got a tip over the wire, Alex, I think I know where Michael is. Just off the Clovis Highway, looks like, maybe mile marker—”

“Oh my God, what is that?” Maria cried, pointing out a funnel cloud, mysteriously lit up against the night sky, directly where they were headed. 

“Yeah, Max, we’re already heading there. I—I think we found him.” 

“They’re saying a dust devil just jumped up out of nowhere. But Michael can’t—” 

“I don’t actually think we know  _ what  _ you all are capable of,” Alex said. “Tell Kyle he needs to get you guys to Caulfield. He’ll know where. I think we may need some backup.” 

“On our way,” Max said, and hung up. 

Maria’s eyes were still wet, after hearing Alex relate the events that led them to the Caulfield facility, and about what had happened there, and about  _ who  _ was there. “Oh my God, Alex. Alex, we’ve done this _ all wrong _ . Jesus, Alex, I knew Guerin had it rough, but, fuck, he needs—”

“I know, I know,” Alex groaned. “I thought we were doing that. I thought he was— _ fine _ .”

But he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. Alex cleared his throat, focusing on the future instead of the past. 

“When we get there, I want you to stay in the car. I don’t know what the fuck he’s doing,” Alex said, peering up ahead at the twister. “He could be dangerous.” 

“I’m not staying in the car,” Maria said, and wiped her eyes and risked a smile. “I’m ready for a fight. I already took my earrings out.” 

Alex didn’t even properly acknowledge the joke, instead saying, “Is that tornado  _ glowing _ ?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I loved the episode. I'd'a loved it more if Alex hadn't walked away from it into the arms of Slam Poetry but I'll take what I can get. They'll keep the bed warm for him. In the meantime, enjoy...
> 
> Oh, that's right. Explosions.

Michael had moved on from puking to nosebleeds, which was making getting drunk on the second bottle of liquor harder, and he’d seen enough movies about aliens and psychics that he knew that nosebleeds were a bad sign. He had that jittery feeling like he got when Alex and Maria—but no one to  _ ground  _ him, here, and—and now all that was left for him was to come ungrounded, unstuck, float off the surface of the earth at a thousand miles an hour and just leave, because maybe space wouldn’t hurt, or it would only hurt briefly. 

But Michael wasn’t afraid of pain. 

The ship really looked—almost like a ship, when he turned to it again. It was gorgeous. Almost made him start to feel better. He smiled again, huffed, wiped blood on the back of his hand. His own genuine Antaran flying saucer. 

The first sign that something was wrong was when he misstepped on a cement block and his legs just gave out beneath him, all wobbly and aching like he had run for hours without stopping. He sprawled to the ground and cut his hands and jeans, spilled some booze.

Of course, he knew he was overtaxing himself: not just fritzing out his powers, but forcing his powers to start eating into his own body, converting mass to energy, once he exhausted the energy that was already there. Like how Max had killed himself bringing back Rosa, and how Isobel had done the same—and the only reason  _ he  _ lived through bringing Max  _ and  _ Isobel back was taking the life forces from—

_ Killing— _

“I’m sorry,” Michael found himself saying aloud, on his hands and knees. He couldn’t get the face of his mother out of his head. The mother he might have had. The mother  _ he killed _ .

Why didn’t he have the power from  _ that— _

“MICHAEL!” 

“GUERIN!”

Michael threw his arm up against new headlights, finally able to read the label on the bottle he was on now. Peppermint schnapps? Could this day get any worse? 

He hadn’t even heard the car approach. The SUV. Oh, God, no, not  _ them… _

He scrambled to his feet. The cyclone flickered, like he couldn’t keep it up, anymore. (Which wasn’t usually a problem when they were around.) 

“Michael, whatever you’re doing, just stop, please,” Maria said, throwing herself out of the driver’s seat after barely putting it in park. She was shouting to be heard over the cyclone of alien debris, covering her face and just wading through the barrier. Her hair whipped crazily in the wind, and she looked so achingly beautiful... “Michael, baby. We need to talk about this. I love you. Please come back—let me make it up to you—”

“Guerin, you shouldn’t be here,” Alex was saying over her. He looked serious and scary and in charge, and Michael wanted nothing more than to just  _ let  _ him be in charge, almost more convinced by that than by Maria’s pleading. “Please, Michael, y-you’re upset, I know, but can you just—just come with—what the fuck are you even…?” 

“Michael,” Maria said more firmly, and then she was traipsing towards him in those shoes, going to break an ankle. “Are you bleeding?” 

Michael backed away from her, keeping them on the other side of his truck. He looked bristled, feral, dangerous. Maria and Alex were reminded that he was both a sad alien boy who needed to be taken care of and a powerful alien who was very capable of murder on a grand scale. 

He didn’t answer them at first, like he had forgotten words, like the seven-year-old first waking up out of a pod. He shook his head, swallowed, wiped his nose again. 

Michael’s only reprieve from their scrutiny was when Alex had his focus arrested by the ship he and his alien powers were building. Fragments whirled around them in opalescent pinks and oranges and blues, the air sparkling. 

And in all that beauty Michael had to watch Alex’s face fall apart and then close off from him as  _ he  _ realized what was happening. 

“Are you trying to leave? Guerin, are you  _ leaving the planet _ ?” Alex pressed, going around the other side of the truck in a flanking maneuver, even if Maria wasn’t necessarily in on it. He sounded sacred, panicky, like he’d do something stupid if he thought it would help.

Maria covered her mouth like she was trying to keep a sob or a scream from escaping, and she moved towards Michael, ankles wobbling in the dirt. “M-Michael, please don’t. Please. I’m sorry.” 

The cyclone kicked up at that, like it was angry, or scared, too. He wasn’t even controlling it anymore. The ship was building itself, like it was responding to him specifically. 

Michael rested a hand on the hood of his truck. Ugly electricity burns were running up his arm, apparently still smoking. He thought dazedly to himself that his hand looked  _ right  _ again, like this. He couldn’t feel any injury (or he did, but he didn’t feel it enough, which might have been worse). 

“W-what are  _ you  _ sorry for?” Michael finally managed. 

He let Maria approach him, terrified to let her touch him but sure that whatever she wanted to do to him he deserved. But all she did was hold his face in her hands. He didn’t deserve this. A tear escaped, clung to an eyelash, and then rolled down his cheek. 

“For not knowing what you needed. Tell me?” 

Why were they being so nice to him? Michael couldn’t stand it. Didn’t they know? He was trouble from the moment he crash-landed on this dumb planet. Everyone else could see it, why couldn’t they? Even Max, who saw the best in everyone, knew he didn’t care about people. Maria was supposed to be psychic. 

Alex stepped into his line of vision, instead of actually flanking him, and Michael couldn’t decide if that was an exploitable mistake or a kindness. 

“We just want you to be happy, wherever you are,” Alex said, sounding like his heart was breaking but he was trying to be brave. Sounding like he was letting him go.

Because, of course, perfect timing. Of course the ship he had been so briefly thrilled about finding just looked like the final statement that they were over. That Michael was leaving. And, sure, maybe he’d  _ thought  _ about it, but…

_ Cause and effect, Michael, _ he told himself.  _ You build a spaceship to leave, they’re going to think you’re leaving. _

Maria sobbed as she realized it, too, dropping her hands away from Michael’s face. Her hands were bloody.

“If you want to leave—” Alex continued. 

Maria talked over him, also trying to be brave: “We don’t want you to feel like you’re trapped here. You’re not, you can—whatever you need—”

All at once the last particle of the starship came together, and the desert went silent. 

“Hang on, I’m  _ sorry _ , you—you’re  _ letting  _ me...” Michael stammered, surprised and perhaps relieved but also, deep down, indignant. Maybe even crushed. 

_ She said she loves me, but she told me to run. _

It echoed distantly in his head, rattling around in his empty heart until it settled with a dull thud in his gut.  _ I love you, but go _ . 

But Michael turned it into a smile, as he always did, because the only thing worse than feeling hurt was showing it. And he nodded, and stepped back, towards the ship, though his legs were shaking. “Guess you really don’t know what I need.” 

If Alex and Maria realized their mistake, they had no opportunity to correct it before a shot rang out, followed by a hail of gunfire. 

Alex tackled Maria, and Michael felt like he had been punched, only to realize that he had been  _ shot  _ when his shoulder started feeling wet and warm. 

“Michael! Oh my God,” Maria cried, tearing off her scarf and pressing it to his shoulder. 

“What the fuck,” Michael said, eyes huge. After way too many seconds of just processing what was going on, he threw a mental shield up between them and whoever was shooting at them, green and translucent. He groaned and nearly puked again from the effort.

Alex, who was peering around the truck, suddenly started screaming, going absolutely ballistic. 

“FLINT, YOU GOD DAMNED SON OF A BITCH!” he said, digging through Michael’s truck for the handgun he knew he had. 

The gunfire stopped once whoever was shooting realized they were not getting through the alien shield—Flint, Alex’s brother? That Flint? There were still Project Shepherd assholes around he hadn’t killed yet? 

“This is a really bad time, Flint!” Alex called. 

“You’re outgunned this time, Alex,” a voice called back. “Give us the saucer and I’ll let you keep your alien pet.” 

Alex glared at Michael, with an intensity that scared the shit out of him. 

“I’m not making a deal with him,” Alex said, before anyone could suggest otherwise. “He’s bluffing, there’s no more than five of them. I just need to get to the gun in my car, and I should be able to hold them off long enough to—” 

With a grunt, Michael sat up, bracing himself against his beloved truck, now riddled with bullets. 

“Easy, Michael, don’t—” Maria tried, but Michael reached out and yanked the SUV closer to them with his powers, tires skidding and dust kicking up, bringing it close enough that Alex could make a run for the back seat. Now Michael was dry-heaving, and he felt gaunt and dehydrated. 

“Michael. Oh, my God, Guerin, easy. Easy.” She reached into her purse, and she had acetone in there, like some sort of girlfriend who carried her boyfriend’s shit around for him because he was an idiot. He didn’t deserve her. That was why he had to leave, wasn’t it?

Alex was back, with a fucking assault rifle this time, looking every inch the soldier. Not the playacting Whitman version of himself, either, but Alex, deadly and terrifying. 

“I’m not letting them take you  _ or  _ the ship, Guerin,” Alex said, all military. “Max and Isobel should be right behind us, so we either wait for them, or you take the ship and go now, and I’ll cover you.”

Alex squeezed his uninjured shoulder, and Michael almost fell apart. 

Before Michael could even answer, Alex shouted over the top. “Flint, I’m telling you to stand down. We should be working together on this.”

“Yeah. We  _ should  _ be!” Flint called back. 

Alex growled and fired a few warning shots around the green barrier. 

“I don’t want you to go, Michael,” Maria was sobbing. “But I don’t want them to hurt you—”

“Tell me you want me to stay,” Michael begged, his voice raspy. Maybe being near-dead helped him to be honest, for once in his life. “I know I don’t deserve it, lie to me. Th-that’s—that’s what I need, DeLuca. Make me stay.” 

_ Oh. Oh, there it is, _ she realized with a gasp, seeing him open and raw like this,  _ that hungry, angry, desperate loneliness. All it wanted was to come in out of the cold.  _

Maria grabbed his face in her hands again. “Michael Guerin, don’t you fucking  _ dare  _ leave us.” 

Michael almost felt like he could breathe again.

“Grenade!” Alex shouted, diving on top of them both. 

And that  _ was  _ all Michael needed, the weight of them both on him, and he just looked at the truck, threw the whole block of metal in the direction of the shooting. He caught the grenade in the truck bed like a tennis racket, batted it back at the enemy, and it went up in flames. Everything exploded, and he remembered trying to shield Alex and Maria with his powers from the blast, from bits of his exploding truck and fire and bullets, and there was a lone siren in the background, and everything,  _ everything  _ hurt, and he was so cold, and then he was out cold. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Michael's truck
> 
> RIP Good Guy Flint but I already killed Jesse I needed someone


	10. Chapter 10

“Don’t overdo it, Max, let me help. We just buried a crime scene the size of a house, take it easy.”

“You could let an actual doctor take a look at him.” 

“I’m kind of busy over here since no one with magic is helping me.” 

“We can heal him some more after we rest. Max, come on, you know I can’t drive stickshift, you can’t pass out on me.” 

“Okay, he’s at least stable. Bleeding’s stopped. Can we, uh, can someone immobilize his arm, or something?”

“Where do you want us to store the ship?” 

“What do you want us to do with your brother?” 

“I could not fucking care less right now, as long as he can’t come after Michael.” Then a sigh. “We can store the ship in the Project Shepherd bunker. Take Flint to the hospital, if you need to. Or there’s a holding cell in the bunker. I can—”

“No. Alex, you should be with Michael and Maria. We can take care of that.” 

The voices sounded muffled, like they were coming from the end of a long hallway, or like he was inside a car with the doors shut everyone one else was outside. Underlying it all was a woman’s voice, humming a soft tune. It might have been Maria, but he wasn’t positive. 

“Are you sure Michael shouldn’t come home with  _ us _ ? I thought you guys broke up.” 

“And I thought I hit you hard enough the first time.” 

Michael huffed, a grin spreading across his face, splitting a cut on his chapped lips. 

“Oh, of course  _ that  _ woke him up.” 

Michael groaned as someone pulled an eyelid open to shine a light in it. He tried to move away from it, but he was pinned down, or at least one arm was. He grunted.

“Easy, Gearin,” Michael heard, and thank God, he finally recognized a voice! 

No thanks to God, it was Valenti. 

But when he opened his eyes, Maria was right there, and he somehow sensed that Alex was nearby, so that was good. Kyle was wrapping up his left arm, the only part of him that felt anything and only because it hurt. The pain was oddly soothing, oddly grounding. Whatever. Michael closed his eyes again.

“I’d recommend painkillers, except I don’t know what all he drank or took. Probably just water and food, and whatever else you guys medicate with.” 

“I’ve got a case of nail polish remover at my house I can bring by—” 

“No, thanks. You’ve done enough.” Alex’s voice, short and firm but not unkind. “We’ll take him to my cabin.” 

“You can come by tomorrow to finish healing him,” Maria added, voice firm and vaguely unkind. “Call first.” 

Michael decided he just liked the sound of them giving orders, even if they weren’t to him.

“Okay, uh. I’ll take care of Flint and his friends until…” Max said.

“Until I can call his C.O. and figure out how much further than my dad this goes,” Alex agreed. 

“The ship?” Michael said, though he hated himself for asking about it. He shouldn’t care right now, but he did, so much. He lifted his head. 

“We’ve got it, Michael. You just get better so you can figure out if it even flies,” Max said. 

Michael grunted and lay back. His truck was—gone—and were there any  _ bodies _ ? He definitely didn’t feel good enough to have killed anyone, this time. 

“You—buried—?” Michael asked, and someone touched his leg. He opened his eyes: Max, holding onto him, looking so damn earnest, it was like he only had one look; and Isobel, standing behind Max, looking worried, but protective. 

“It’s taken care of, Michael,” she said. 

_ Huh. So that’s what that felt like.  _

...

They had him laid out in the back of the SUV, with the back seats down, and a sleeping bag wrapped around him. He was still cold. Maria was holding him, the only part of him that was warm. 

“So, you...you’re not dumping me,” Michael said. He was tired, he was bone weary, and he hurt, but at least he felt Quiet. The black hole inside him was too tired to be hungry, and maybe them just being here fed it a little bit. “You  _ can _ , still, you can just—roll me out at the Airstream, I’ll be fine. Don’t feel obligated.” 

“Don’t be dumb.” Maria sighed and shook her head, tucking the blanket closer around him. “Here’s a better question: are you dumping  _ us _ ?” 

“You think I ever could?” Tears rushed his eyelids like they wanted to start a fight, and Michael blinked, holding them back. “Maybe it would be better if…” But he swallowed, and didn’t finish the sentence. 

Alex waited to make sure he wasn’t going to say anything more before he spoke. “Better for who?” 

“Me, obviously,” Michael said with a grin, stretching into the familiar position of masking self-loathing with sarcasm, badly. “I have never been better.” 

Alex’s huff might have been a laugh, but Maria didn’t even smile. She just rolled her eyes and pressed her cheek against his forehead. 

“You were running away, Guerin,” Alex asked, sounding open and hurt and— _ scared _ ? Michael wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Alex sound scared before, not for years, anyway. “You never run, Michael, you’ve never been the leaver. What did we do to—”

“Nothing,” Michael said, mostly because Alex was starting to sound like he was going to cry, and Michael could not handle that. “You didn’t—it was just me being…” 

That was a tired excuse. He was so tired. 

“I wasn’t trying to  _ leave _ , I was just…it was...” That the relationship had begun to feel like a trap, a cage, and not the kinky kind he desperately wanted to be in, either. It was hard for someone who wanted to be loved and kept who was also fucking terrified of being loved and kept, he supposed. So of course he had responded like a predator testing the fence for weaknesses, for a chance to get out— _ not because he wanted to be free _ , but because he just couldn’t hack being domesticated. 

“Fear of commitment? Testing boundaries?” Maria supplied. Funny thing was, she didn’t sound like she was blaming him, or judging him. She made it sound like these were reasonable, fair responses, and Michael didn’t know what to do with that. 

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Michael said. 

No one said anything, and Michael was left alone with his thoughts. Finally, he just shrugged. “Now I just feel like I escaped Jurassic Park and ate somebody.”

Like he’d got out only to learn that the world had changed too much for his taste in 70 million years and being a velociraptor in the wild wasn’t fun anymore. 

(God, was he still drunk?)

Maria at least laughed a little at that, shaking her head. “Okay, well, what do we need to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again?” 

“Shoot me?” Michael asked hopefully.

Maria’s voice was instantly stern. “ _ Not funny, Guerin _ .”

Alex didn’t say anything, and now Michael just felt worse. He shook his head, shrugged one shoulder. They deserved the truth, even if it was fucked up. “If anything, I guess…maybe you made it easy.” 

There was a short silence. 

“That’s not fair,” Alex said, though he didn’t want to say it, knowing he knew he wasn’t in a good place right now, either, echoes of gunfire still turning his emotions into confetti. “You felt trapped but we  _ also  _ didn’t fight hard enough to keep you? Which is it?” 

“You wanted me to tell you to stay,” Maria said, sounding slightly far away, like maybe she was reading him, or maybe just remembering a key conversation. “You don’t want us to let you leave. No matter what. Even when you try.” 

“God,  _ please don’t let me leave _ ,” Michael gasped out, all in a rush. Then he sniffed, feeling too vulnerable again, and got himself back together. “I’m sorry I’m a…” There just wasn’t a word:  _ mess  _ and  _ trainwreck  _ were too cute. “You can hate me. You should hate me.” 

“Okay, you’re going to have to do a lot more than make out with Lindsay Ramirez to make either of us  _ hate  _ you,” Maria said. “I already slugged Isobel, so I purged myself of violent—” 

“Wait, you  _ what _ ?” Michael spluttered, trying not to laugh. 

“She did. In front of everybody. It was...a thing to see.” Alex agreed, like an old man telling war stories. 

And then Michael really laughed so hard he could count his ribs. “It’s not Izzy’s fault I messed up.” 

“It is her fault for not recognizing that you don’t know how to fucking say no,” Alex snapped. “Especially to her.” 

Michael sat with that a minute. Alex was right. Michael just hadn’t ever thought of it as a...problem before. And how it was maybe a problem with them, too. 

“I promise, Lindsay kissed  _ me _ ,” Michael said eventually.

“We believe you,” Alex said. 

“It’s not your fault you’re a snack,” Maria hummed, kissing his hair. 

Michael laughed again, and clutched his side. 

“Oh, my God. Please don’t be nice to me,” Michael moaned, and might have started crying again. “I’ve literally never deserved it less.”

“And that. That right there,” Maria said, suddenly shaking her head. 

Alex sighed from the driver’s seat.

“What? What right there?” Michael asked, when she went no further and he felt like he was missing something crucial. He was determined to get it right, this time. 

“Love isn’t something you gotta deserve, Guerin.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to [ninhursag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag) for reminding me to not neglect Alex's issues, so that's what this chapter attempts to address.

Michael woke in the dark to a man bent over his left hand, panic spiking through him. 

“No!” he shouted, shoving the man to keep him away, only to have Max lay a hand on his chest. 

“Michael! Michael, easy, it’s just me.”

“Max?” Michael panted, falling back. He was in a bed. God, he was in Alex’s bed, at the cabin. Down in the bunker. They really were serious about  _ keeping  _ him, for some reason. How did they even get him down here while he was fucking unconscious? He snapped, giving Max the full brunt of his irritation. “What the fuck are you doing here? What time is it?” 

“It’s almost noon,” said Alex, calmly, from his other side, and the sound of his voice or his presence or something actually calmed him down. He adjusted the pillows and drew Michael back down, feeling his pulse jump under his hold. “Lie back, Michael. Max is just here to heal you the rest of the way.” 

Michael nodded and stayed quiet, letting whatever happen to him now that Alex was here. 

“Drink this,” Alex instructed softly, helping Michael lift his head and sip some water. Michael obeyed.

As his eyes adjusted, he realized it wasn’t actually that dark in here, just dim. He still felt shaky, but his shoulder felt less holey and the burns on his arm and hand were doing better, too, and Alex made it so Max’s presence didn’t even grate. “You should leave a scar this time. So I don’t have to wear a bandana on my hand for the rest of my life.” 

Max looked pained, glancing between Michael and Alex uncomfortably. “I don’t want it to  _ hurt  _ you, Michael. Not like—”

“Took you ten years to decide to care about that one, so. Leave it, man. I’m fine,” Michael said, withdrawing his arm and rolling over. “You can fix it when this alleged fucking alighting happens.” 

“ _ Michael _ ,” Alex began sternly, but Max held up a hand.

“No, it’s fine. He—he’s right. Uh. I’ll go check on Izzy and her chile mac, help bring it down here.” 

Alex didn’t answer as Max let himself out. He was frowning at Michael, but he crawled into bed with him, rolling him against his chest. He grabbed a gatorade off the nightstand and opened it up before handing it to Michael. “You’re making it really easy for us to keep you all to ourselves, you know.” 

Michael sipped at the gatorade. “Don’t flatter yourself. I wanna be left alone. I’d kick you out, too, if I could, but this is your house.” 

Alex laughed. “You’d try.”

Michael took another sip, staring at his hand. More scarring, still tender, but not crippled. Enough to look more like it used to, but without the pain. Alex started to gingerly wrap it up in medical gauze. “You wouldn’t let me.” 

“No. I guess I’m not supposed to.” 

Michael actually fell asleep like that, cradling a bottle of gatorade and scrunched up against Alex’s chest like it was the safest place in the world and all he needed was a safe place. 

And Alex was fine with that. 

He was, he would do anything to keep Michael safe. He fine, he was—

Alex took a shaky breath and let it out, but the actual sob coming out surprised him. He clapped a hand over his mouth and stopped his breathing, trying to keep it together, not wanting to wake Michael, not like this. But here Michael was, fine, mouthing off to his brother and sleeping like a baby in his arms, after all that. 

After Alex thought he was going to lose him, finally, forever, permanently, to outer space. 

...

“I’m serious about your boyfriend, Alex,” Flint had said last night, or early this morning, from the other side of a cell, when Alex had finally visited him. Flint sported a broken leg and was bruised to hell from being crushed by a flying truck, but just as defiant, just as  _ sure he was right _ . 

That was a problem that ran in the family, it seemed. 

“You can keep him. Dad was wrong about that. We can’t hold them like animals.”

“I suppose we ‘just’ need their tech to build weapons to kill them, right?” Alex shot back, and Flint hadn’t answered. Of course that was right. 

“When we get invaded, Alex…”

“We’re not getting invaded,” Alex had snarled, hitting the bars of the cell. “That was dad’s paranoid psychosis.” 

“ _ When _ we get invaded,” Flint tried again, “I’m hoping your friends will help us. I think your boyfriend’s right in the middle of it. Maybe the cause of it.” 

“Guerin’s just a—”  _ lost, scared little boy _ and  _ mega-powerful clone of an alien warlord _ both struggled to get out of his mouth. Alex had read the briefings about Rath. “You’re going to  _ turn him into _ the cause of it by shooting at him. Shooting at  _ me _ .” 

Flint gave him a hard look, at that, like he maybe felt bad, like he maybe understood. 

“I’m sorry, man. I know you’re dealing with—”

“It’s fine. And you’re not sorry.” Alex had turned away abruptly. He’d up his anti-anxiety meds for the next few nights and he might need to give his therapist a call, though he wasn’t sure what he’d say to her: ‘Yeah, you know, my PTSD was triggered by my boyfriend trying to leave earth in a spaceship and my brother shooting at me. How was your weekend?’ 

Alex had taken a huge breath before he turned back around, unlocking the cell door and tossing Flint a pair of crutches. They were an old pair of his crutches, actually, ones that he hated because they hurt his hands. 

“Those aliens you’re so scared of? One of them saved your life tonight, because I asked him to. Your ribs were crushed and you were bleeding internally, and I—they—could have let you die. We didn’t. You come after me, or Michael, or any of them, you try to come after the technology that  _ belongs  _ to them—”

“They don’t even know anything  _ about  _ their own—”

“Do  _ we  _ know anything about mom’s people?” Alex demanded, voice going almost shrill. “No, because we've assimilated, and because white people come and dig up their sacred grounds and take their shit from—”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Alex! The aliens are the Europeans in this story. You and me, we should know the pattern even better than Dad did. Maybe there’s just a few of them now, and maybe they’re sweet and nice and need our help, but they’ve all got smallpox blankets—”

“Get the fuck out of here, Flint. If I ever see you trying to hurt them again, I will kill you myself.” 

… 

Alex was still shaken from that, shaken from the shooting and the fucking  _ grenade  _ last night, and now he was crying, sobbing silently, trying to hold Michael still so he wouldn’t wake him up.  _ Was it bad to get tears on aliens? _ he thought, trying to make himself laugh.  _ Asking for a friend _ . 

When Maria came down the ladder, barefoot with a cooler full of food slung over her shoulder, Alex still hadn’t pulled it together. 

“Alex. Oh, my God, Alex. Is he okay? Are you okay?” Maria demanded, setting the cooler down and running to him.

Alex nodded, biting his lip. “Sorry, sorry. I need—”

Maria wrapped her arms around him, and this was their life, wasn’t it? Maria holding Alex together while he held Michael together. God, he was glad she was here, as he sobbed into her chest. 

Mercifully, Michael slept on. 

“It’s a lot. Yesterday was a lot. You saved us. We’re gonna be okay, thanks to you. You’re brave and strong, stronger than your family and all your demons, Al. And you’re loved. I love you. Michael loves you. Mama loves you like her own son. She told me you’d need a hug when I saw her this morning.” 

Alex smiled wetly at that, but Maria’s pep talk did pull him together somewhat. “I just need—can you get some meds out of my bag and bring them to me, please?” 

“Sure, babe,” Maria answered, kissing his forehead and squeezing him before moving away. 

Alex’s breathing started to even out as she returned with them. She looked at the label to read the dosage, and dumped one pill out. “This gonna put you to sleep?” 

Alex shook his head. “No.” 

“Shame. We need it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watch out in the Malexa/Milucax tags, kids. Butthurt people are rewriting the 2x6 airstream scene as non-con and sometimes not tagging it. 
> 
> I would encourage people who were quick to assume that Alex was "violated" in that scene to check if [misogynoir](https://stitchmediamix.com/2016/05/13/black-ladies-deserve-love-too-lupita-nyongo-concern-trolling-and-white-feminism/) has something to do with their own reaction. Based on the fic I'm seeing, it does. We can be better.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to [Lori Lane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoriLane) and [Haloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud) for looking over this chapter.

Michael didn’t wake until some time later, to the smell of chile mac and the clink of spoons on bowls, and no Max or Isobel anywhere pressing on his brain. He still ached everywhere, his shoulder and hand still wrapped and not all the way healed. He was ravenous, a feeling he knew too well, what it was like to not have eaten in days. But Maria and Alex were there in bed with him, so he felt safe. Michael didn’t know how long he was out, but judging by the fact that Maria wasn’t wearing a bra and Alex wasn’t wearing his prosthesis, it was probably getting towards evening. 

Maria was sitting close to Alex, supporting him: he was leaning back against her chest and she was messing with his hair, and they looked so soft and so good together it made him ache even more. Michael felt both like he was intruding on this domestic bliss and like an idiot for throwing away his chance to be a part of it. “You know, maybe it’s you two who should date, and just use me for sex.” 

Alex and Maria looked at him, surprised to find him awake. 

“I thought that was what this relationship already was?” Alex said softly, with an indulgent grin.

“Oh, don’t tease him, he might think you’re serious,” Maria said, swatting Alex as she pushed him off her to check on Michael. “Hey, baby, how you feeling?” 

“Better...than I have any right to, I guess,” Michael tried. 

Maria frowned at him, but got up to make him a bowl of chile mac while Alex helped him sit up. Michael needed zero encouragement to wolf down the food, recognizing Isobel’s recipe for how hot it was. He felt immediately better after eating, and he even ate seconds, and drank two bottles of water afterwards. He couldn’t remember ever being that hungry. 

“Thanks,” he said, when Maria moved to take his bowl away. 

“Thank us by not _ever_ doing that again,” Maria said. 

“I know, I—” Michael said, like he was gearing up to defend himself, and then he grabbed his hair, grit his teeth. “I freaked out.” 

Maria rubbed the back of his neck. “We could talk. That’s usually a good step. Might help everyone.” 

“Was it the Coke Zero?” Alex said abruptly, seemingly out of the blue, like he had been coached or coached himself to say this and was trying to get it out before he chickened out. “That was the first—I mean, when I would guess the trouble started—” 

Michael actually had to laugh, though it hit nearer the mark than was comfortable. “Alex, my tailspin was _not_ about the Coke.”

“Not me being disappointed? And you feeling that, because of the psychic connection?”

“No. I don’t know,” Michael said, feeling like a bug under a microscope, and getting defensive about it. He looked between them uncertainly. “You really want to talk about this _now_?”

Maria shrugged. “You’re awake. It’s kind of the elephant in the room until we do.” 

Then she looked back and forth between Alex and Michael, realizing something. “Oh, my God, you two _never_ fucking talked? No wonder you were such a mess for so long. Typical dudes!” 

Alex grinned tiredly. “That’s sexist, DeLuca.” 

“I’m technically a different species,” Michael teased. “Maybe on my home planet, the cis males are victims of the kyriarchy. I mean, maybe we hatch in eggs! And dads keep ‘em in a pouch like seahorses and get bossed around by all the lady seahorses.” 

“That would explain _so much_ about you,” Maria smiled, shaking her head. “But don’t get sidetracked. Clearly we did something wrong that we don’t know about, Michael, so, please. I mean, we _all_ did something _wrong_ , but I think it started with us.” 

Michael huffed, a defeated sound. “Seriously? You think you—” he spluttered out, unable to complete that sentence, it was so absurd. 

Yeah, okay, he deserved this. Talking about his feelings was definitely a fate worse than death. 

“Look, my problem is always gonna be me. You two are so— _so_ generous with me, and if I can’t handle it, that’s not your problem, it’s mine.” He shook his head. “You two are perfect.” 

“We are _not_ perfect, and I’ll thank you kindly not to insult me or my best friend like that again,” Maria said. 

“I mean, _obviously_ ,” Alex said, with a little smile. “If I get pissed over fucking Coke Zero. You have to understand that that doesn’t mean I hate you.” 

Michael shrugged. “It shouldn’t bother me, anyway. I’ve been disappointing people my whole life, I don’t know why I…I care so much with you two.” 

Maria sighed. This wasn’t even just a _ugh, men_ problem, as much as she wanted it to be. This was a _Michael is deeply damaged_ kind of problem. “Okay. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend this _is_ all your fault and we had nothing to do with it. Hypothetically.” 

“For starters, it would be nice if you could figure out—if _we could help you recognize_ ,” Alex began, sternly, and then seemed to get a handle on something and corrected himself, made his voice softer. “There’s, like, a sliding scale when your loved ones are mad at you, Michael. We’re not going to drop you the first time you have a rough week.”

“Okay,” Michael said, trying to absorb that. He knew that was how that worked, intellectually, but he’d never seen it actually pan out for him that way. 

“I get it. Someone gets mad at me, I go into defense mode, _still_ , and my dad’s gone, he hasn’t been able to hurt me in years,” Alex said, opening up slowly. “But...I had other people in my life showing me that wasn’t normal. And I guess you didn’t. We hope you’ll let us show you that that’s not normal.”

“I know you feel...left a lot,” Maria said softly. “And I know you may not really believe it’s true until you see it a lot, but we are not going to leave you that easy. I think that’s part of what—of why you did what you did. Testing us, because you didn’t believe we would stay.” 

Michael shrugged for answer, as close to confirmation as she was going to get, and she ran her fingers through his sweaty, dirty hair. 

“We passed your test, right?” Alex asked. “You get that we’re staying.” 

Michael looked up. “I don’t know _why_...but yeah,” he said miserably. 

“And you know that’s not fair to us,” Maria said, managing not to sound accusing at all, but rather that she was stating objective facts. “You don’t test people you’re in a relationship with. Just because I get why you did it, doesn’t make it okay. I’d like for you to acknowledge what you did, and apologize for it, and do something to make it up to us.” 

Michael nodded. “Okay. I will. I’m trying.” 

“Is money going to continue to be an issue?” Alex said, always ready to exploit an opening. 

Now Michael really turned red, with anger this time, as much as shame. 

“Would I be wrong in thinking that’s why everything started going to hell?” Maria asked, and ticked things off on her fingers: “The cokes and popcorn at the store, the working late and missing date night, the phone, the gambling and fighting—” 

“To be fair, I’d’ve probably picked a fight with Wyatt over anything that night,” Michael growled, and chewed on the inside of his mouth. “But. Yes. Alright? I already feel like I’m...not enough with you two, like, like I can’t thank you enough just for—just for _caring_ , and then you buy me shit and I can’t give you anything back, and it’s...embarrassing.” 

Alex sighed, running a hand through his hair and moving to stand up—except he wasn’t wearing his leg and pacing in crutches just didn’t have the same feel, so he just moved to the edge of the bed and bounced his left leg on the floor, turned away from both of them. This was something he _really_ couldn’t understand, and knew he didn’t, or couldn’t, because he had never been rich but his family had never gone without anything, either. But, _still_...

“Okay, I know you don’t need a lecture on toxic masculinity, or American capitalism, or any of the systemic issues underlying poverty. It’s not a moral or intellectual failing that you make less money than we do, especially considering you gave up a full ride to college as a teenager to help protect a sister who, by the way, doesn’t—” 

“Alex,” Maria said, cutting him short: maybe it was because she’d already gotten a hit in, literally, but she was done blaming Michael’s siblings for never doing enough for Michael. They did what they could. Now it was hers and Alex’s turn, and they were going to do better.

It was Maria’s turn to chew her cheek, like she was mirroring Michael, or maybe this was a sign that she was getting into his head. “It’s not either of those things, is it? It’s that you feel you don’t deserve it?” 

Michael huffed. “You don’t need to read my mind for _that_ , DeLuca. I’ve never deserved anything from either of you.”

“Michael,” Maria began, but wasn’t sure how to respond to that without being _angry_ or making him feel stupid (he _was_ , though, he was just so, so stupid, so handsome and so brilliant and so, so dumb). So she tried another tack: “Okay. Putting aside what you deserve, which I hope you realize is severely skewed, what if I told you that we—well, I won’t speak for Alex—that I like taking care of you financially? Like would you _deny_ me if the sugar mama thing really turns my crank?” 

“Ha,” Michael said, and then squinted at her. “Does it?” 

“I’m serious, Michael. You let me do every other damn thing I want to you, but not this?” 

“I’m not sure I ever want to think of myself as a, uh, _Sugar Daddy_ ,” Alex said, making a face of distaste, “but I agree. I do derive pleasure from spending money on you. You let us dress you under your clothes and you never complained about that.”

Michael began to look a little worried. “Maybe I don’t know how much girl’s panties cost? Please don’t—don’t enlighten me.”

“It varies,” Maria said with a shrug, patting his knee. “But, yeah. Yeah, Alex is right. Not even in a kinky way, but that, too. I mean, it makes me feel good to make sure you’re eating right, and regularly, and that you’re dressed nice, and warm enough at night. If it helps to think about it as something that’s for _me_ as much as for you, would that make a difference?” 

“Uh,” Michael said, eyes darting between them again. “L-let me think about that?”

Alex finally turned back to them, nodding. Now they could both see that the wheels were obviously turning in his head, and that was an oddly comforting realization for both Maria and Michael. Any problem Alex was on top of was a problem that much closer to being solved. 

Michael took a deep breath, prepared to take one step in the right direction, the only way he knew how:

“Look, I would really just, like it if you, ah. Can you just, ah. Be mad at me? Please? However you need to—I—” he swallowed, trying not to get too emotional. “I won’t—I won’t break, or run off. I promise I’ll take it. I just need to get back to a place where you can trust me again.” 

“Oh, Michael,” Maria cooed, drawing him into a hug. 

Michael resisted, tensing up in her arms. 

“I mean it, DeLuca. Hate me.” 

“Shh. Let me hate you how _I want to_ , you moron,” Maria said, wrapping both arms around him. “Maybe I can strangle you better from here.” 

Michael huffed wetly, and relaxed. The bed dipped, and Alex crawled back into bed with them.

“Maybe saying you’re sorry would be a good start?” Maria asked, petting his hair. 

Oh, God, he felt _more_ sorry like this. She wasn’t doing this right. He wasn’t going to learn anything from this if they didn’t kick and scream and hate him, even a little. Or maybe being _forgiven_ was going to be the worst torture of all. It certainly felt like it. What did he know about forgiveness? His breath began to hitch, as he tried to keep himself from crying.

“Okay,” he said, on the edge of bawling or hyperventilating or something. “I’m sorry.” 

“For?” Maria prompted. Alex laid a hand on the small of his back, and a sob burst out of him. 

“For,” Michael made an effort. “For, uh. Being a complete fuck-up—”

“Nah-uh. Try again,” Maria interrupted. “Specific things you _did_ wrong. Not what you are, that’s just insulting our taste.”

Michael laughed a little and got his breathing under control. 

“And please _don’t_ apologize for getting the wrong Coke,” Alex said tightly. “ _I_ apologize for being a baby about the kind of Coke I like.” 

“It’s okay,” Michael said, already feeling a little better. He was pretty good at forgiving other people, and Maria’s murmured “Good,” in his ear was encouraging. He still liked being good for them, that was all he _wanted_. 

Michael sniffed and tried again: “I’m sorry for missing enchilada night. I was distracted, and worried about—about cash, and overtime, and it was an accident. But I know it worried you, and upset you, and I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay. Accidents happen,” Maria said. 

“Thanks for apologizing. I forgive you,” Alex echoed. He was squeezing Michael’s side now, sliding closer to him. “I’m sorry for freaking out.” 

“S’okay. I guess I kinda like it that you worry about me.” 

All Michael could think was that he didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve this press of warm bodies, not ever but certainly not now, but it felt too good to not let it happen. He’d apologize for anything like this, especially when the apologies came back at him as forgiveness and somehow more apologies? He was a little lost as to how this worked, still, maybe. Except—

“Okay, but do I _really_ have to apologize for punching Wyatt Long?” 

Maria laughed, a real belly-laugh. “Causing a ruckus in my bar? Getting Deputy Evans involved?”

“It did get Long some more community service and an extended parole,” Alex pointed out. “I think he had to paint over some graffiti on the Crashdown.”

“Ooh, good point. Okay, maybe we’ll let that one slide,” Maria said. 

She reached around Michael to pull Alex closer, and Alex draped his left leg over Michael’s legs, a comforting weight. 

“I’m sorry I was a dick about my phone. I, ah. I was annoyed by the texting only when you needed something, annoyed that you guys were like, trying to save my minutes for me. I missed the, ah, hearts and bullshit. And I could have been less of a baby about that.” 

Alex drew back to look at Michael, and at Maria. “S-see, we didn’t even know that upset you, Michael. _I’m_ sorry.” 

“Me, too, baby,” Maria said, kissing his brow. “You deserve all the heart emojis.” 

Michael laughed and wiped his nose on his fist. “No, I don’t.”

“You do. Next time, say something. Make _us_ apologize, okay?”

 _Yeah, right_ , was what Michael thought, but, “Okay,” was what he said. 

“Now let’s talk about Lindsay,” Maria said, voice a little harder. 

“Was it a Ross Geller thing?” Alex asked. “You thought we were on a break so you...?” 

“Is this a _Friends_ reference? I don’t get it,” Michael mumbled. “And, no, it was...it was...I don’t know, I was plastered.” 

That wasn’t good enough, but they let him think, which was kind of agonizing. 

“Vindictive apathy,” he finally decided. “I didn’t care, and I was mad, at the same time.”

“Testing the fences,” Alex nodded. “A commitment issue.”

Michael sighed, submitting himself to the mortifying ordeal of self-psychoanalyzing. “I guess. And I did genuinely want to help Izzy. I might have done it anyway except under normal circumstances, and if I’d been sober, I definitely would’ve dodged the kiss. I mean I dodged you two for twelve years, I’m pretty good at that.” 

“Yeah, you are,” Alex sighed. “Well, we forgive you for that, too.” 

“Maybe we do get a collar for him,” Maria suggested. “ _If Lost Return To…_ So Lindsay knows next time, even if you forget.” 

“Honestly, if that didn’t exclude me from polite society…” Michael’s laugh turned into a sigh. “Not that I’m exactly fit for polite society, anyway.” 

“Okay, well, we forgive you,” Maria said, and hugged him, and then transferred him over to Alex to get a hug from him, too. 

It seemed easier to breathe after the hugs.

“Are we...am I your boyfriend again?” Michael asked. 

“Oh, honey,” Maria smiled sadly, and kissed him. 

“You never stopped being our boyfriend,” Alex told him. “And we owe you a few apologies, too…” 

“We definitely took the kinks too far,” Maria said, face going intentionally blank, like she was trying to keep a blush of shame down. “No more sex worker roleplay until we’re all good about money.”

Michael winced. Here it was. “No, but, I _liked_ that.”

Maria shook her head. “But I can’t trust you to say no if you _didn’t_ like it, Michael. Just like you’re going to need time to trust we’re really going to stick around, no matter what your abandonment issues and commitment issues say, we’re going to need time to learn we can trust you to police your own boundaries. And until then, we’re going to police them.” 

Another boundary. He tried not to sound too disappointed when he said, “So...no more S&M stuff?” 

“I didn’t say _that_ ,” Maria laughed. 

“We’ll need to negotiate what we all want better,” Alex explained. “A lot better. Especially anything with, uh. We’ll call it corporal punishment. It’s a little too close for both of us.” 

Michael’s face shut down on instinct, and he had to work hard to let the cracks show through. “Jesus, Alex, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, it’s okay. I like it, too, believe me. Pain is, uh…well, it’s obviously something we both like dealing with, it’s…” 

“Interesting?” Michael supplied. 

“Yeah,” Alex agreed, grateful. “But it’s got a lot of baggage, too, for both of us. We just need to be more careful, okay?” 

“O-okay. It’s still something that I want, if you two do. I just really want to be good for you. And it makes me feel...”

“Quiet.” Alex reached out and touched Michael’s face. He got it, and Michael was so grateful that he got it. 

“Yeah.” Michael leaned into Alex’s palm, feeling a little too raw and open, and grateful Alex wasn’t pressing further right now.

“And in the meantime, how about some getting back together cake? Chile chocolate, I think that’s your favorite?” Maria said, and Michael and Alex hadn’t even noticed that she had left the bed until she stood there holding an actual cake. A _homemade_ cake. 

“H-how’d you know?” Michael asked, too flabbergasted and hungry to ask how she knew they’d even _get_ to getting back together part before she made a cake expressly for this purpose. How long had he been unconscious? He glanced at Alex to make sure he was following this correctly. 

“Liz knew, of all people. Or that’s what she said. Is that right?” 

“I don’t—I mean, yeah. I think so.” Michael didn’t really _have_ cake all that often, but chile chocolate sounded to him like it was probably his favorite. He couldn’t think of anything better.

“I’ll make coffee. We can be very European about this,” Alex suggested. “Unless you want something else?” 

“Coffee sounds great,” Michael said, bewildered. They were back together. Had they even said that part, or was it just implied? Maybe since they hadn’t properly broken up, they didn’t need to say it. He was left staring at them dumbly from the bed, while Maria cut a cake she had made while she was still mad at him. Michael almost wondered if it would be easier if it were poisoned. Alex hobbled about on one crutch and one leg, making coffee with this whole mini-kitchen they had apparently moved down here. “C-can I help?” 

“Nope. Sit there and look pretty,” Maria said, though neither of them were looking at him. 

“Okay,” Michael said, not really okay. He reminded himself that they _liked_ providing for him, and anyway, he didn’t feel exactly strong enough to help much. He’d probably get winded going to the bathroom. Which maybe he should do. 

When he was back from the bathroom and a quick shower, they had set a cake and coffee picnic out on the bed, and the TV was on. 

“Hey! We’re watching _Leverage_ now?” Michael asked, brightening in spite of himself. 

“If you want. I bought the DVDs, since signal down here is terrible.” 

If Michael thought he was already ready to cry again just from being back together with them and watching _Leverage_ with them, that was before he actually tried the cake, when he did start sobbing—fake-sobbing, but it fooled Maria— 

“Oh my God, Michael, baby—” 

“It’s just so good,” he sobbed until he was laughing, and she shoved him hard. 

“I thought you were actually crying!” 

“I think I hit my crying quota for, like, the year,” Michael said, laughing, and then went quiet. “This is...really good cake. Thank you. Uh. Thanks for getting me out of that—”

He looked at Alex, who was focused on his cake, whole body suddenly tense. 

“It’s fine, Guerin.” 

As in, _Leave it alone._

Michael frowned, and then, like the other apologies made this one easier, or like they helped him finally realize what he had actually done wrong, he blurted out, “I’m sorry for scaring you, Alex.”

Alex actually looked at him, then, and Michael saw how red and puffy his eyes were, and he just kept talking:

“I’m sorry I ever thought about leaving, even for a second. I know that hurt you. That it’s always been the thing that scared you—” 

“I wasn’t—scared,” Alex said carefully, but he let Michael and Maria pull him into a hug between them. He took a breath, carefully didn’t cry. “You never have time to be scared in the moment. I heard the gunshots and—reacted. I was _hurt_ , when I knew what you were doing...” 

“I’m _sorry_ ,” Michael repeated. “Oh my god, Alex, I’m sorry. I wasn’t gonna leave, I swear. I wouldn’t have made it far before I came back, you gotta believe me.” 

Alex took in another breath, shaky this time. “I’m just glad I was there. If Flint had—”

“Thank you. _Thank you for being there_.”

Alex nodded tightly. 

“I’m sorry I put you there. I love you,” Michael pressed. 

“I’m sorry my family put _you_ there.” Alex sighed. Finally he blinked. “I love you, too.”

Maria brushed his hair back from his face. “What do you need, Al?” 

Alex turned to her and smiled softly. “Chocolate, I think. Lots of chocolate.” 

Maria smiled. “Got that.” 

“And—” Alex turned to Michael, pointing his fork at him sternly. “You owed me at least one jerking around like that, after everything, but _never again_ , Michael.”

“Maybe less gunfire, next time?” Michael tried, grinning a little, trying to joke, and then he patted Alex’s chest, laying a hand over his heart while Alex glared at him. “Never again.” 

“You’re damn right,” Maria said. 

Alex nodded slowly, turning back to his cake. “Gonna build a better velociraptor pen this time.” 

That surprised a laugh out of Michael. 

“Yeah,” he said, a little breathless. The analogy made him feel...well, good. Like he was worth keeping. Like even though he didn’t belong on this world, there was a corner of it where he could be happy, where he didn’t have to hunt for his own food or even worry about larger predators. Maybe like he was a bit of a badass from whom the world needed protecting, which was definitely appreciated, because he didn’t feel like much of a badass now. “So, Halloween costume: Ellie Sattler, Alan Grant, and me in one of those inflatable T-Rex—”

“Oh my God,” Maria laughed. “Good thing I can’t enter the Pony’s costume contest, because we would _win_.” 

“We could enter the Crashdown’s,” Michael suggested. 

“I thought you were going to suggest Hardison, Parker, and Eliot,” Alex said, nodding at the TV. “ _I_ still want to do _Star Wars_.” 

While Maria and Alex debated various costume ideas, with Halloween still months away, Michael stretched out across both of them and ate his cake, letting the touch of them and the sound of their voices keep him grounded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this story, but subscribe to the series to stay tuned! I promise they'll work through their issues and we'll get back to your regularly scheduled kinky smut soon. 
> 
> Even though this is canon-divergent from the end of S1, I plan to incorporate more of what we've learned about Alex and Maria's high school experiences in S2 that would obviously influence this relationship 👀 👀 👀
> 
> Thanks to all those who have read, kudoed and commented!


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